(CNN)In the wake of the Tuesday mass shooting at an elementary school in Texas, Twitter users went viral by making false claims about two of the state's most prominent politicians: Gov. Greg Abbott and Sen. Ted Cruz, both Republicans.
On Thursday, a Twitter account going by the handle "My Cancer Journey" posted a three-tweet tale that was shared tens of thousands of times by others on Twitter before it was deleted.
The tweets purported to be written by someone whose nephew was shot in the massacre at Robb Elementary School. The tweets claimed that an Abbott representative knocked on their door, shortly after they returned home from identifying their nephew's body, and that this representative "informed us he's willing to pay us to stand with the Gov and say we don't need stronger gun laws."
The tweets claimed that the governor's representative then threatened them with "charges and possibly worse" if they spoke about the conversation -- then that the representative even said that "people get hurt and disappear all the time."
In total, the three tweets were retweeted or quote-tweeted more than 67,000 times and liked more than 240,000 times. Many of these shares were from liberals opposed to Abbott and Cruz. While some wondered if the story was real or not, others took it as authentic.
Facts First: The viral story about Abbott is fake. The "My Cancer Journey" account deleted the three viral tweets on Friday, then the account was taken offline entirely. The man behind the...
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