Mitchell says tweets were Photoshopped, did not send them
House District 3 Legislator Braxton Mitchell said he did not send offensive tweets back in 2017 that used a slur to describe women and another to describe gay people.
“I did not send those tweets,” Mitchell told the Hungry Horse News in an interview.
Mitchell is 20. The tweets would have been sent when he was in high school.
He claimed they were “Photoshopped.”
The alleged tweets first surfaced during the election during the primary and general election.
The tweets were recently distributed as a screenshot to local news outlets. The Hungry Horse News tried to contact alleged recipients, but one person had their account suspended by Twitter for breaking its rules of conduct and the said he did not recall the tweets.
Mitchell’s Democratic opponent, Debo Powers, said she saw the alleged tweets during the race last fall.
As a former school principal, she noted that even if the tweets were actual, they were from a high school student and she didn’t give them much credence.
The mailer that included the alleged tweets came from a separate Democratic committee, Powers noted, not her campaign.
Another mailer from party operatives also made allegations against Mitchell that made him look like a child abuser, she said.
That prompted her to write a letter to the editor condemning the mailers, she said, as they were personal attacks against Mitchell.
“I thought it was a reflection on me,” she said. She said she ran a campaign that focused on the issues. The mailers she sent out personally never mentioned Mitchell, she noted, and stuck to the issues.
Powers did say, however, that she would hold Mitchell accountable for his voting record during the session. Powers was the incumbent in the race.
Mitchell, meanwhile, submitted his first bill last week. The bill would allow a person who accidentally hits an animal in the road to humanely dispatch it, he said.
The person would not be able to keep the meat, however. It would have to be donated to a food bank, Mitchell noted.