Newton Mayor Wayne Levante is standing by his Facebook peddling of debunked "crisis actor" conspiracies targeting David Hogg but said it was intended as a rebuke of the media, not the high school student.

Hogg, a survivor of the Parkland, Florida, mass shooting, spoke at a gun safety rally in Livingston on Sunday -- several days after Levante, via multiple posts on the mayor's personal Facebook page, waded into a discredited video and other allegations on the Internet attacking the 17-year-old's story.

Mayor Wayne Levante at a Town Council meeting in Newton, Feb. 26, 2018

"People have a right to look at this stuff and form an opinion," Levante, a Republican, said Monday night of a post he shared from the "Donald Trump Commander in Chief 2020" Facebook page.

"They have a right to watch David Hogg struggling to answer questions and misstating words and for them to decide whether or not he's just a nervous young kid, or he's trying to remember lines that CNN gave him," Levante said, in an indirect allusion to another debunked conspiracy theory about the network scripting questions for the Florida survivors.

Levante added that he accepts Hogg was at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School on Feb. 14, when 17 were killed, but is undecided on whether the story he is telling is fully his own.

"I'm not saying one or the other," he said in an interview before the Newton Town Council meeting.

Levante is running for reelection to the council in May and was named mayor last summer. He drew statewide attention last fall upon calling for a consolidated, county-wide school district in Sussex County.

Though his personal Facebook account is set to private, his posts about Hogg became public after James Santonastaso -- one of the mayor's Facebook "friends -- uploaded screen shots to the page of the Newton Democrats.

Levante did not dispute the authenticity of his posts, including one from the Trump 2020 page in which he shared a description of Hogg as a "so-called student, but actually a crisis actor."

One of Wayne Levante's Facebook posts

In another post, Levante wrote, "Something just isn't authentic with this kid."

His posts prompted Scott McDonald, the former mayor of Washington Borough in Warren County, to post an FYI note to Levante's account with a link to a news story about an aide to a Republican state legislator in Florida fired after falsely accusing Hogg and other students of being child actors.

Santonastaso is a member of the Sussex County Democratic Committee who drew notice in August after he recorded Assemblyman Parker Space, R-24th, describing one of his Democratic opponents as a "bitch" three times following a drug awareness vigil in Newton.

Contacted Monday, he said he shared Levante's posts with the public because he felt Newton residents should have the opportunity to discuss them.

"I'd like to see him come out and show some support to the kids in Parkland, because that's what matters now," Santanastaso, a Hampton resident, said of Levante.

However, when the Newton Town Council met at 7 p.m., no one in the audience addressed the mayor's Facebook posts, nor did any of the other members of the council.

Levante weighed in at the start, speaking for just over a minute and telling the audience that it is "too early" to be discussing gun control and other policy matters relating to the Florida shooting.

Earlier, he offered a fuller explanation on his separate, public Facebook page, which he retooled as a blog after drawing some criticism last fall over his school board commentaries.

"I put that the media is playing us," Levante told the audience.

"They're pushing an agenda with this tragedy and I stand by that statement," he said.

Rob Jennings may be reached at rjennings@njadvancemedia.com. Follow him on Twitter @RobJenningsNJ. Find NJ.com on Facebook