You can thank the Daily Beast for today’s “wait, what?” White House reporting, with a story out tonight about a furious manhunt over who at the U.S. embassy in Brussels liked a Chelsea Clinton tweet.

Yes, you’re reading that correctly.

You may remember that back in 2017, Ivanka Trump briefly sat in for her father during a G20 meeting with world leaders, a move that received a lot of criticism.

President Donald Trump tweeted in defense of the move and said the “Fake News” would’ve loved it if Chelsea Clinton had done the same thing. Clinton tweeted in response, “It would never have occurred to my mother or my father to ask me. Were you giving our country away? Hoping not.”

Good morning Mr. President. It would never have occurred to my mother or my father to ask me. Were you giving our country away? Hoping not. https://t.co/4ODjWZUp0c

— Chelsea Clinton (@ChelseaClinton) July 10, 2017

As Erin Banco and Asawin Suebsaeng report tonight, one of the many Twitter accounts that liked that tweet belonged to the U.S. Mission to the EU in Brussels, which somehow set off a wild manhunt:

That kickstarted a weeks-long investigation, prompted by the secretary’s office, into who exactly at the Brussels mission had access to the Twitter account and hit like on Clinton’s tweet, according to two former U.S. officials… Nearly 10 people were interviewed about whether they, as administrators of the account, had mistakenly or deliberately pressed the “like” button. All of them denied any wrongdoing, those sources said. One individual familiar with the exchanges said the Secretary of State’s top managers in Washington “wanted blood” and called Brussels numerous times demanding the name of the culprit.

Apparently the investigation ended with officials there unable to give a name and the embassy ultimately updating the Twitter account so that it “limited access to just two individuals.”

One person described as a senior veteran of the Trump administration is quoted saying, “There were definitely times [during the Tillerson era] where ambassadors would complain about a complete lack of information flow between the White House and State, and that they would be in the dark about what they were supposed to say, or even put on Twitter.”

actual government resources and manpower and extended time were dedicated to this one twitter “like” in the early Trump era https://t.co/YYOKK2oS4C

— Asawin Suebsaeng (@swin24) December 31, 2019

from Mediaite https://ift.tt/2u8xzsF