Missouri Attorney General Andrew Bailey (R) accused Kansas City of doxxing the Chiefs’ kicker, Harrison Butker, and pledged to hold the city accountable in a statement Thursday.
“My office is demanding accountability after @KansasCity doxxed @buttkicker7 last night for daring to express his religious beliefs,” Bailey wrote on the social media platform X, linking to the city’s official government account and to Butker’s account.
“I will enforce the Missouri Human Rights Act to ensure Missourians are not targeted for their free exercise of religion,” he added. “Stay tuned.”
Bailey’s statement came in response to a now-deleted post from the Kansas City government account Wednesday evening that read, “Just a reminder that Harrison Butker lives in the City of Lee’s Summit.”
Within two hours, the Kansas City account had taken down the post. The account also released a subsequent statement, saying, “We [apologize] for our previous tweet. It was shared in error.”
The city’s mayor, Quinton Lucas, issued his own public statement, calling the original post “clearly inappropriate for a public account.”
“The City has correctly apologized for the error, will review account access, and ensure nothing like it is shared in the future from public channels,” he added.
The post followed a wave of backlash to a commencement speech Butker gave to a Catholic liberal arts college Saturday, when he attacked President Biden for a myriad of issues — including how he squares supporting access to abortion while publicly identifying as a devout Catholic — and railed against “bad leaders who don’t stay in their lanes.”
“The bad policies and poor leadership have negatively impacted major life issues. Things like abortion, [in vitro fertilization], surrogacy, euthanasia, as well as a growing support for the degenerate cultural values and media all stem from pervasiveness of disorder,” Butker said.
“Our own nation is led by a man who publicly and proudly proclaims his Catholic faith, but at the same time is delusional enough to make the sign of the cross during a pro-abortion rally,” he continued.
Biden is only the nation’s second Catholic president in history, and he frequently attends Saturday evening mass with his family either near his home in Wilmington, Del., or in Washington, D.C.
At times, however, Biden has had to balance the positions of the Catholic Church on issues like abortion and LGBTQ rights with the political realities of being a Democratic president.
Biden’s abortion views have evolved over the 50 years he’s been in the public eye, but he has consistently supported the right to abortion access since becoming president. The president has said that as a practicing Catholic, he’s not “big on abortion” but thinks the Roe v. Wade decision “got it right.”
Butker’s remarks were an apparent reference to when Biden gestured the sign of the cross last month during a rally against abortion restrictions.
“He has been so vocal in his support for the murder of innocent babies that I’m sure to many people, it appears you can be both Catholic and pro-choice,” Butker added. “He is not alone. From the man behind the COVID lockdowns, to the people pushing dangerous gender ideologies onto the youth of America, they all have a glaring thing in common — they are Catholic. This is an important reminder that being Catholic alone doesn’t cut it.”