It looks like the ABC affiliates helped the Trump campaign harvest email addresses for the campaign to use as it tries to get Donald Trump elected.

The Daily Beast writes that on Friday morning, ABC’s digital news operation posted a number of stories that effectively assisted the Trump re-election campaign in building its email list.

Some of the network’s largest affiliates posted an identical piece of content on their websites promoting a “birthday card” for President Donald Trump.

The “card” was actually a petition website created by the Trump campaign and the Republican National Committee to harvest email addresses that can be used during the 2020 campaign.

“Happy Birthday, Mr. President!” the stories read. “To help him celebrate, the GOP has made him a digital birthday card... Those who want to leave their well wishes can do so on the GOP’s website.”

At least five ABC owned-and-operated affiliates ran the piece before it was purged, including stations broadcasting in the major media markets of New York, Philadelphia, and Houston. The string of stories was first spotted by a Twitter user who monitors Trump campaign fundraising emails.

A spokesperson for ABC’s affiliate stations told The Daily Beast that the piece was initially posted “by an overnight producer at one of our local stations and they did not follow the station’s editorial standards.” Additional stations, which are free to draw content from other ABC affiliates, then posted their own versions.

“The story has since been taken down,” the spokesperson said.

Prior to its removal, each story linked to a page created by an RNC-affiliated group at donaldjtrump.com, the Trump campaign’s website. The page encourages visitors to hand over their names, email addresses, phone numbers, and zip codes.

It’s funny how often when a mistake of this magnitude is made, the corporate office always blames a “overnight” or “low level” employee.

As someone that works overnight, I take exception to this.

Secondly, you guys hired and trained this person, so blame who you want, but you are at fault.