Trump administration launched probe to discover who ‘liked’ Chelsea Clinton tweet

‘People were constantly trying to get other people fired,’ says former official

The Trump administration reportedly launched a mission to find out who had “liked” a tweet penned by Chelsea Clinton berating Donald Trump.

Ms Clinton, the daughter of Mr Trump’s former Democrat rival Hillary Clinton and ex-president Bill Clinton, hit out at the US president in July 2017 for letting his daughter​ Ivanka Trump have a key role in a meeting with the G20.

A Twitter spat between Mr Trump and Ms Clinton surfaced after the US president hit out at criticism he received for involving his daughter.

The world leader tweeted: “If Chelsea Clinton were asked to hold the seat for her mother, as her mother gave our country away, the Fake News would say CHELSEA FOR PRES!”

Ms Clinton hit back: “It would never have occurred to my mother or my father to ask me. Were you giving our country away? Hoping not.”

According to the Daily Beast, a staffer at the American embassy in Brussels got a call from the State Department in Washington in July 2017 after discovering someone with access to the mission’s Twitter account had liked the above tweet by Ms Clinton, which has now gained more than half a million likes.

The US publication reported almost 10 individuals were interviewed about whether they had either intentionally or erroneously liked the former first daughter’s tweet.

Unnamed sources told the Daily Beast all of the people denied having done so.

A source aware of the situation said top managers for Rex Tillerson, the then secretary of state, “wanted blood” and called Brussels a number of times asking for the wrongdoer’s name.

American officials in Belgium did not ever manage to tell the office who had fired off the tweet and the embassy overhauled who had access to the Twitter account – curbing it to only two people.

Two ex-White House officials claimed mention of the apparent Chelsea Clinton controversy became a point of gossip among Trump aides in the West Wing.

“During that first year, people were constantly trying to get other people fired; some even compiled lists of people to fire that they would show, or try to show, to the president,” one of the former officials said. “[The Chelsea Clinton incident] was another little thing that fuelled suspicions and reminded…officials in the White House that there were a lot of people working in the administration who clearly hated Donald Trump.”