These Mark Field tweets are fake

25 June 2019

What was claimed

Mark Field MP tweeted in 2011 about threatening a girl on the tube and in 2014 in favour of beating women and children.

Our verdict

The tweets are fake.

A post on Facebook claims to show screenshots of tweets sent by Mark Field. It’s faked.

Last week Mr Field was suspended from the government following the release of footage showing him pushing a Greenpeace activist who was protesting at a speech by the Chancellor, Philip Hammond.

An image on Facebook purports to show tweets from Mr Field in 2011 claiming to have threatened a girl on the tube and in 2014 expressing opinions in favour of beating women and children.

These tweets are faked. There is no record of the tweets on Mr Field’s Twitter account. There is also no record of them ever having been deleted from his Twitter account, according to Politwoops, a service that records politicians’ deleted tweets.

The timestamps on the screenshots of the two fake tweets show that, if real, they would have been sent at exactly the same times as other tweets that were genuinely sent by Mr Field.

This suggests that the real tweets have been doctored to show fake text.

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