County exec’s porn star Twitter follow was not his doing, aide says

Suffolk County Executive Steve Bellone had nothing to do with his Twitter account following a porn star, a Bellone aide said Monday.

The @SteveBellone Twitter account was following Belle Knox, a “19-year-old Duke University student and porn actress,” according to the New York Post, which first reported it on Friday.  The actress was “one of the 267 people on his ‘following’ list,” the Post reported. She has more than 106,000 followers on Twitter.

“While we would love to say that the North Koreans did this, the reality is that we do not know how this happened. This is an official Suffolk County government Twitter account that has been operated over the years by staff for public announcements and notifications. The County Executive has never personally operated the Twitter account nor logged on to it,” Bellone spokesman Justin Meyers said in an email today.

In the Post article, Bellone, who is married with three children, said he had “no idea how his account came to be linked” with Knox’s account ; the Post quoted Bellone’s spokeswoman Vanessa Baird-Streeter, who said the account was “hacked” and added that Bellone’s office filed a formal complaint with Twitter and “a third party software used to assist in managing the account.”

She added that law enforcement and the Suffolk County Police Department were investigating the matter, according to the Post.

“Whether this action was done maliciously or accidentally, the fact remains that it was inexcusable and disgraceful. Therefore the authorities were notified,” Meyers told SoutholdLOCAL today.