Trump FEC Pick’s Twitter Goes Dark After Users Spot Anti-Protestant Links

President Donald Trump speaks during a meeting with Amir of Kuwait Sheikh Sabah Al Ahmad Al Sabah, in the Oval Office of the White House, Thursday, Sept. 7, 2017, in Washington. (AP Photo/Evan Vucci)
President Donald Trump speaks during a meeting with Amir of Kuwait Sheikh Sabah Al Ahmad Al Sabah, in the Oval Office of the White House, Thursday, Sept. 7, 2017, in Washington. (AP Photo/Evan Vucci)
Start your day with TPM.
Sign up for the Morning Memo newsletter

The Twitter account for President Trump’s new pick for the Federal Election Commission was reportedly made private Tuesday evening after other Twitter users began noticing some of the nominee’s past sharing of anti-Protestant posts.

The White House announced late Tuesday night that Trump was nominating Trey Trainor, a Texas lawyer who repeatedly clashed with the state’s campaign finance regulators, to serve on the Federal Election Commission. Trainor is being picked to serve the remainder of a six-year term that expires in 2021, according to the White House announcement Tuesday night, but it is not entirely clear which current commissioner he will be replacing.

While many election law experts were quick to point out Trainor’s reputation of fighting campaign finance regulation, others noticed the “interesting” tweets in his timeline.

By Wednesday morning, Trainor had made his Twitter feed private, but not before a few users took screen shots of some of his Tweets, including those that appeared to promote anti-Protestant podcasts.

 

Trainor appears to have tweeted out links to audio episodes posted by the hardline Catholic website, Church Militant. Trainor has appeared on a radio show hosted by the website in the past to talk about the litigation around the Planned Parenthood “sting” videos.

Trainor did not immediately respond to TPM’s inquiry about the deleted tweets.

The links he apparently tweeted more recently are to Church Militant posts claiming the superiority of Catholicism over other religions.

“Protestantism is poison,” reads the subhead of one of the posts.

The host, Michael Voris, in one of the audio clips tweeted out by Trainor, says the various Protestant off-shoots “have perverted views of Christ.”

“There are no Protestants in heaven, just as there are not other religions in heaven,” Voris says.

Trainor is a well-known lawyer in Texas politics, currently working for the firm Akerman. He represented Michael Sullivan Quinn, a political kingmaker in Texas who got in trouble with state’s ethics board for failing to register as a lobbyist. Trainor represented Quinn’s and other Tea Party groups as they sought to replace over half of the board, Texas Ethics Commission.

Trainor represented the Republican National Committee’s platform committee and did some work for the Trump campaign during the Republican National Convention.

He has already served in the Trump administration, in a temporary position under Secretary of Defense James Mattis.

Trainor has a record advocating for religious causes. He was behind a push to install a Nativity scene in front of the Texas state Capitol in 2014. A year later, he got in a tussle with a watchdog group that sought to put a pseudo-nativity display at the state Capitol that had the Bill of Rights in the place of the baby Jesus.

“They want to continue this war on Christmas,” Trainor said at the time.

Latest Muckraker
Comments
Masthead Masthead
Founder & Editor-in-Chief:
Executive Editor:
Managing Editor:
Associate Editor:
Editor at Large:
General Counsel:
Publisher:
Head of Product:
Director of Technology:
Associate Publisher:
Front End Developer:
Senior Designer: