At least two participants at ABC News’ “town hall” event Thursday with presidential candidate Joe Biden had undisclosed Democratic Party affiliations.
Nathan Osburn, a 2008 Obama-Biden press aide, was described as a “communications” professional in an on-screen graphic and was introduced by host George Stephanopolous as “a Philadelphia, Pennsylvania Democrat.”
Osburn, now a Google employee, worked in 2008 on “high-profile media inquiries” for the Obama-Biden campaign, according to his LinkedIn page, and “[h]elped secure and publicize high-profile newspaper endorsement.”
He later worked at the Commerce Department in the Obama-Biden administration. In 2003-2004, he worked one year at the Bush administration Federal Aviation Administration.
He asked Biden, “what do you say to LGBTQ Americans and others who are very worried right now about erosions of their rights and our democracy as a whole?” without noting Biden voted in the ’90s to federally ban same-sex marriage and for a bill banning gay soldiers.
Mieke Haeck, identified by ABC News as a physical therapist, was described as a first-time voter from State College, Pennsylvania. Her party affiliation wasn’t noted when she asked a question involving her 8-year-old transgender child.
Haeck is the wife of Ezra Nanes, a Democrat who ran an unsuccessful 2018 challenge against Republican state Senate Majority Leader Jake Corman, Fox News reports.
Stephanopolous introduced the questioners by saying some are pro-Biden, some are pro-President Trump and “some are still undecided.”
The revelations follow undisclosed information about a far more contentious ABC News town hall that featured Trump last month.
An “uncommitted” participant at that event, Kutztown University professor Ellesia Blaque, did not disclose volunteer work for Biden running mate Sen. Kamala Harris (D-Calif.), and had called Trump “a f–king moron” and a “pig” online.
Another supposed swing voter at the Trump town hall, Philadelphia pastor Carl Day, had tweeted he “never once supported Trump and won’t now. What I will do is call them out of their foolery.”
Biden’s event was sedate and made few headlines. Stephanopoulos presided without grilling Biden, including about The Post’s reporting this week on Hunter Biden emails implicating the Democratic presidential candidate in his son’s lucrative business deals in Ukraine and China.
ABC News did not issue a statement on the new reporting.