Evangelicals for Harris claim attack by Franklin Graham lawyers

The Evangelicals for Harris political action committee claimed that attorneys associated with evangelist Franklin Graham tried to get their ads featuring his father removed from social media.

“Knowing that he will lose in court, (Franklin Graham’s) lawyers are now sending repeated letters to trigger the automatic freeze on our accounts. He is afraid (chic) Christians sharing the truth. But we keep winning,” Evangelicals tweeted about Harris X on Friday.

The PAC also claimed that Meta, formerly known as Facebook, restored its page on the platform after it was disabled amid reports of intellectual property.

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Knowing that he will lose in court, @Franklin_Graham lawyers are now sending repeated letters to trigger automatic freezes on our accounts. He fears that Christians share the truth. But we keep winning:
“I understand that your Page has recently been disabled due to one or more intellectuals… pic.twitter.com/7Kv9JjW5bY

— Evangelicals for Harris (@Evangels4Harris) November 1, 2024

Last month, the Billy Graham Evangelistic Association’s legal counsel sent a cease-and-desist letter to evangelicals for Harris after they launched a $1 million ad campaign in September using images of the late Reverend Billy Graham to attack the former president donald trump.

The ads feature clips from Graham’s historic sermons interspersed with clips from Trump to suggest the former president doesn’t follow Graham’s gospel message.

A BGEA spokesman told The Christian Post at the time that the Charlotte, North Carolina-based nonprofit generally avoids commenting on current or potential disputes, but confirmed that Evangelicals for Harris had been notified of the alleged copyright infringement.

“We have communicated directly to this group our concerns about the unauthorized, political use of BGEA’s copyrighted video and will continue to take appropriate action to address the issue,” the spokesperson said.

The BGEA spokesman suggested that Graham himself, who expressed regret because he got too close to some politicians, it would have been overshadowed that his sermons were being used to promote any political candidate.

“It may be worth noting that in all his years of ministry and dealings with 11 American presidents, Billy Graham sought only to encourage and counsel them in Christ as revealed through the Word of God “, said the spokesperson. “He has never publicly criticized presidents and would certainly refuse to let his sermons be used for that purpose, regardless of who is involved.”

In response to the letter, Evangelicals for Harris released a formal legal response arguing that “the limited use of Billy Graham’s speech falls squarely within the fair use protections afforded by Section 107 of the Copyright Act.”

The Graham family has become a recurring theme among evangelicals for Harris, with Franklin Graham’s niece Jerushah Duford delivering messages of support for PAC and supporting Harris as she publicly attacks her uncle.

Duford, whose mother is Billy Graham’s eldest daughter, recently wrote a op-ed in Newsweek endorsing Harris and claiming Trump is “a megalomaniac.”

The Christian Post has reached out to the Billy Graham Evangelistic Association for comment on the evangelicals’ latest claim against Harris and will update this story if they respond.