Remember how Rep. David Rivera is allegedly a giant, corrupt scumbag? Well, someone in his office would rather you forget. According to Politico someone in Rivera's office is desperately trying to remove all references to the many investigations Rivera currently finds himself at the center of from his Wikipedia page.
On March 16 at 6:40 p.m. someone with the Wikipedia handle "Lmveiga" took to Rivera's entry and deleted a summary of Rivera's legislative career, which includes stints in the Florida House and Senate before being sworn into into the U.S. House earlier this year, and replaced it with a list of Rivera's "legislative accomplishments" that was pulled word-for-word from Rivera's campaign website.
Then Lmveiga decided to just delete an entire section entitled "Controversies." Other Wikipedia editors restored the page to its previous state, but Lmveiga once again deleted the controversies section. The section includes subsections on "domestic violence allegations," "mail truck collision," "additional sources of income," and "dog track payments."
So, who is Lmveiga? Well, Rivera's press secretary is Leslie Veiga, and she uses the "Lmveiga" handle on Twitter.
"My only interaction with Wikipedia editing, which has been personal interaction on my own personal time, has been to add factual, documented information and remove false, undocumented allegations," Veiga told Politico. "The information I added was well sourced and linked to legislation on the Florida House website that the congressman sponsored during his time in the state Legislature, as well as current information about his committee assignments and subcommittee assignments in the U.S. House."
Though most Wikipedia pages can be edited by anybody, it mandates that all edits be made in a neutral and unbiased manor. Other Wikipedia editors quickly accused Veiga of a conflict of interest, and its likely they will ensure that the original version of Rivera's entry, controversies and all, remain on the site. The current entry now includes a reference to Veiga's attempt to change the entry.
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