Stanislaus County Superior Court tweet regarding the removal of a Confederate statue in Portsmouth, Virginia. Screen grab from Twitter. Credit: ALM

Stanislaus County Superior Court officials are blaming a hacked Twitter account for a post Thursday afternoon that endorsed President Donald Trump's reelection and ridiculed protesters who tore down a Confederate statue.

The post, which appeared shortly after 1 p.m. Thursday, retweeted a video uploaded by One American News Network anchor Alex Salvi showing protesters on Wednesday evening dismantling statues encircling the Confederate monument in Portsmouth, Virginia. Debris appears to hit someone in the crowd. Local media reported Thursday that a man at the gathering sustained serious head injuries.

"Some like their karma instantly. I'll take mine in November. #Trump2020," someone wrote above the video on the court's Twitter account.

The post was deleted some time before 1:30 p.m. after The Recorder asked court officials about the tweet.

"I am looking into this right now," Stanislaus court executive officer Hugh Swift said in an email. "I expect our account was hacked."

Swift said shortly after that he was going to talk to his "IT guys" to find out what happened.

A new tweet appeared on the court's account shortly before 2 p.m.: "Sorry for any tweets that may have gone out today. This accounts (sic) password was compromised."

The now-removed tweet was posted just hours after all seven members of the California Supreme Court issued a statement in response to the public outcry over the death of George Floyd: "We state clearly and without equivocation that we condemn racism in all its forms: conscious, unconscious, institutional, structural, historic, and continuing."

Swift did not immediately answer questions about who may have posted the tweets or who has access to the court's Twitter account. When originally contacted, Swift said he does not use Twitter and had not seen the "karma" tweet.

As of midday Thursday, the account had 119 followers and was following 30 other accounts. One of the accounts followed by the court is Jeanine Pirro, the former New York state judge and Fox News host.

The court's account had "liked" a video segment from Pirro's Tuesday show that criticized what she characterized as the lack of attention being paid to the death of David Dorn, a retired St. Louis police captain and African American who was killed while trying to protect a friend's pawn shop from looters last week.

That "like" had been removed from the court's account by 3 p.m. Thursday, although the court was still following Pirro's Twitter account.

After the Confederate statue video was removed, Stanislaus court's Twitter feed remained filled with past innocuous notices about court holiday closures and civil grand jury information.