A disgruntled State Department official changed the biographies of President Donald Trump and Vice President Mike Pence to say his term was coming to an end on Monday – nine days before President-elect Joe Biden took office – two diplomats in exercise with knowledge of the situation told BuzzFeed News.
The changes to the State Department website come days after Trump incited a deadly US Capitol insurrection that prompted Democrats to initiate the impeachment process a second time and led to requests by Pence to invoke the 25th Amendment and remove Trump from the office .
The president’s biography was changed to “Donald J. Trump’s term ended in 2021-01-11 19:49:00”, while the vice president’s biography was edited to “Michael R. Pence’s term ended in 2021 -01-11 19: 44: 22. ”The time stamp on the Trump page changed several times, before both pages were removed at around 3:50 pm and replaced with a 404 reading, “Sorry, this site is experiencing technical difficulties. Please try again in a few moments.”
One of the diplomats said Secretary of State Mike Pompeo had ordered an internal investigation into the matter, beginning with interns and officials who leave the State Department this week and the next, before the transition to the Biden government.
Both diplomats said an investigation into the matter could be challenging, considering how many people have administrative access to the content management system used for the State Department’s official website.
It is a “closed system” that is “almost impossible to hack”, said one of the diplomats.
“It’s not 100% a hack,” they said.
In the past few days, dozens of career American diplomats have signed two cables of unprecedented dissent condemning Trump for inciting the deadly Capitol insurrection last week, Foreign Policy magazine and other media reported.
Those media outlets said the second telegram with the strongest words rebuked Pompeo for his “failure to issue a statement recognizing unequivocally that President-elect Biden won the 2020 elections” and protested the “president’s incitement to insurrectionary violence against states United”.
More than 100 State Department officials signed the telegram, including three who told BuzzFeed News that they would have preferred an even stronger language.
Their frustration, they said, partly resulted from Pompeo’s weak statement, published in a series of tweets on Wednesday, which called the takeover of the Capitol “unacceptable” but did not include any mention of Trump.
Asked to comment on changes to the site on Monday, the White House referred BuzzFeed News to the State Department, which did not provide one immediately.
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