Look up Rep. Chris Smith (R-N.J.) on the social media site X, formerly known as Twitter, and you see his picture and his letterhead. But it’s not his handle.
As a result of that handle, the congressman has been criticized for postings that he didn’t make and opinions that he didn’t express—all while being stymied in his efforts to find out the identity of the person behind the phony handle.
“It’s all about deception, and I have a right to know who is doing this,” Smith told JNS. “I wanted to take it down, but I have a right to know at least who is smearing my name.”
“Somebody in that business over at X knows,” the congressman said. “Why could they know, and I can’t know?”
The account is listed as a “parody” on X, but that hasn’t stopped groups that support the long-term congressman from using that parody’s ChrisSmithNJCD4 handle when thanking him for his efforts in posts on X. (JNS sought comment from X.)
What galls Smith most of all, he said, is that the person behind the handle has used it to spread antisemitic and anti-Israel messages, even though the veteran lawmaker authored the law that made the U.S. State Department’s Office to Monitor and Combat Antisemitism and gave the special envoy ambassadorial rank.
He co-chairs the House Bipartisan Task Force for Combating Antisemitism, and he’s used his chairmanship of a House Foreign Relations subcommittee to hold hearings on the issue.
“It’s been a lifetime of concern and work on behalf of it,” Smith told JNS.
The congressman still tells the story of his family’s sporting goods wholesale business, which was adjacent to a luncheonette where a Holocaust survivor, his tattooed number visible to all, dined regularly.
Smith said that his father wanted his children to talk to him, to ask questions of his experiences.
“My father made sure that my brother and I both had lunch with him,” Smith told JNS. “That’s why Holocaust remembrance is so important, because if you don’t remember it, you repeat the mistakes.”
“Those who forget the past are condemned to relive it,” he said.
Under Smith’s name on social media, however, are tweets such as, “I just spoke to my handler at AIPAC. We need to get American soldiers on the ground in Iran,” invoking the antisemitic trope of Jews controlling the world.
Another antisemitic trope says that “we in Congress are owned by Zionist Israel, and I’m ok with that.”
Some of the posts quote other articles and then comment on them. One quoting Pope Leo XIV criticizing violence against Palestinians calls the pope “an antisemite and a moron.”
Another has an article blaming former President George W. Bush’s 2003 Iraq War on Israel, adding that “I know thousands of American soldiers died for Israel in Iraq, and will gladly do it again in Iran.”
Smith said he got an earlier phony account taken down, but X is refusing to budge on this one. Even though the page expressly says “parody” in two places, people apparently think that’s his official page, he said.
Anti-abortion groups, supporters of Smith’s efforts to highlight China’s efforts against the Muslim ethnic group the Uyghurs, opponents of wind energy off the Jersey shore and even the New Jersey Bankers Association have identified Smith by the phony handle as they praised his work, according to screenshots that Smith’s office shared with JNS.
“I think a lot of people are not aware as to what parody means,” Smith told JNS.
“If this thing is growing, this inauthentic account is going to deceive more people,” he said. “Especially overseas, where there’s a language barrier or something.”
The handle is “posting all these terrible things,” he said.
Smith is not on the social media site, so the phony page is the only one with his name.
He shut down his page on the site, then known as Twitter, in January 2021 citing “security concerns” two weeks after the Jan. 6 riots at the U.S. Capitol.
Smith was one of the House Republicans who refused to overturn the certified election results that showed Joe Biden becoming president. “Divisive and hate-filled tweets have become far too frequent and impede the healing so needed today,” he said at the time.
Smith told JNS that he left the social media site for another reason. He was a leader of congressional efforts to oppose China’s crackdown on Hong Kong’s freedoms.
At one point, China declared that “any contact with a foreigner constitutes a violation,” Smith said. He took a look at his 15,000 followers from Hong Kong and said, “Oh God, they’re going to use that. It’s a hit list for them.”
“So I got off for that reason as well,” he told JNS.
But X won’t do anything to quiet this fake account, Smith said.
He said that he even went up to the site’s owner, Elon Musk, at a House Republican gathering to ask him to take action. Musk told him to contact one of his top officials. Nothing happened.
“That’s why I’ve been profoundly disappointed in Twitter, or X,” Smith told JNS. “We sent letters. We did everything by the book to say, ‘This is an impersonation. It’s malevolent. It is deceptive, and your own policy suggests at least that you want none of that, and it’s absolutely designed to mislead people.’”
At the very least, Smith said, X should let him know who’s behind the site.
“They owe me to tell me who it is,” he said. “There’s no right to secrecy when you’re engaging in such a very nefarious enterprise.”
“This is their word: ‘You may not impersonate other identities or individuals, groups or organizations to deceive them,’” he said. “This is all about deception. It’s all it is. I can’t believe they can’t see that.”
