Someone Is Trying to Scrub Trump's Name From the Wikipedia Page of Lieberman's Law Firm

There’s a Wikipedia edit war going on right now on the page of the law firm of Kasowitz, Benson, Torres & Friedman. That wouldn’t be notable except for the fact that someone is trying to scrub Donald Trump’s name from the page and Joe Lieberman is a special counsel at the firm. Lieberman is a frontrunner to head the FBI and his relationship with the firm has been a point of concern.

Lachlan Markay, a reporter with the Daily Beast, pointed out the initial edits on Twitter. You can see screenshots of the edits below.

The user briefly removed Trump’s name from the third sentence of the entry that reads, “Notable clients have included Donald Trump,[4] Robert DeNiro, Celanese, ArvinMeritor, Liggett Group, Enron, WorldCom and Mia Farrow.” The reference beside Trump’s name goes to an article titled “Meet Marc Kasowitz, the litigator who often represents Donald Trump.” Currently, the reference has been restored despite a back and forth between admins and the anonymous editor.

Indeed, Kasowitz has represented Trump a number of times including in his defamation case against Timothy L. O’Brien, author of TrumpNation: The Art of Being the Donald. An appeals court ruled against Trump. who claimed he’d been defamed because O’Brien said he wasn’t a billionaire. Marc Kasowitz also threatened legal action against the New York Times last October when that paper published some of Trump’s tax returns from 1995. Nothing ever came of the threats. Trump’s general counsel Alan Garten told the Wall Street Journal in January that “Marc’s always been a guy you go to when you have complex, intricate legal problems.”

With Trump in a very sticky situation after firing FBI Director James Comey and admitting that he did it to help put an end to an investigation of his campaign’s ties to Russia, it would stand to reason that he would want someone friendly to take over the position. Who better than a lawyer at the firm that Trump turns to when he has “complex, intricate legal problems.” It would also stand to reason that Trump supporters would understand how bad that looks and want to keep it out of the public eye.

Taking a look at the IP address (66.190.119.13) of the Wikipedia editor that’s trying to remove Trump’s name reveals something odd. Their only other edits have been on Trump advisor Stephen Miller’s page and Trump’s State of the Union address page, in both cases it was to make the Trump team look better. When you look up the location of the IP address you get this location in Horton, Alabama.

Is there anyone prominent from the Trump campaign in that area? Well, there is Bradley Williams, the only person from the nearby Cullman, Alabama who qualified as a delegate for Trump at the 2016 Republican National Convention. If you look up Bradley Williams in Horton, Alabama, you get this address.

Bradley Williams is the Director of Communications for the Cullman County Sheriff’s Department, so it would stand to reason that he understands a little bit about public relations and might want to help save Trump some embarrassment. But, it’s worth noting that the address and IP appear to be just outside of Cullman County. So, we asked Mr. Williams if he was the one doing the editing. This was his response:

I was a Delegate for then candidate Donald Trump, however, I have no knowledge about edits to the wiki page you are speaking of or any other wiki page. I am not the only Bradley Williams in Alabama and I also don’t live in Horton, Alabama. I live in Cullman County Alabama.

Fair enough. For what it’s worth, his email came from a different IP address. It’s certainly a hell of a coincidence that a Bradley Williams appears to live pretty much exactly at the location of the IP address making edits to Wikipedia for Trump and a Bradley Williams was the only delegate for Trump in the area. But hey, weird stuff happens.

What we know for sure, is that someone wanted less attention to be paid to that particular Wikipedia entry and they have miserably failed.