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.
It’s unclear who authored the edits, but what we know for sure is that someone wanted less attention to be paid to that particular Wikipedia entry and they have miserably failed.
Correction: A previous version of this article raised the question of whether Trump delegate Bradley Williams authored edits to the Wikipedia article on the law firm of Kasowitz, Benson, Torres & Friedman. A person named Bradley Williams appears to reside at an address that falls within the general area to which the IP address associated with the edits resolves. However, the delegate Bradley Williams denied authoring the edits and, upon review, he does not reside at this address. We regret the error.
[H/T Lachlan Markay, Timothy Burke]