Huma Abedin's sister was one of the chief cheerleaders for the presidential election recount - and spread bogus theories about it online.

Heba Abedin urged her followers on Facebook to call the Department of Justice because it was supposedly tallying phone calls to see if a vote audit should be done.

But the message - which Heba appears to have copied directly from a viral post - was not true and was debunked by the DOJ.

Heba, 37, whose older sister Huma is one of Hillary Clinton's closest aides, has subsequently deleted the Facebook post.

Scroll down for video

Close: Huma Abedin (right) and her sister Heba share a bond as sisters, with Heba an active Hillary Clinton campaigner

Viral: This is the - now deleted - post from Huma Abedin's sister's Facebook account which has been tweeted, blogged and reposted repeatedly Clinton sympathizers

She's with her: Heba Abedin makes no secret of her affection for her sister's longterm boss

Her intervention comes after Green Party Presidential candidate Jill Stein raised millions to pay for a legal challenge leading to a recount in Wisconsin, which will start on Thursday.

Clinton, the Democratic candidate, lost the state to Donald Trump by 27,000 votes, the first time the Wisconsin has voted for a Republican since 1984.

The Clinton camp has said it is 'participating' in the recount but is not financing it.

Stein has said that she does not expect the recount to change the result but wants to see if the voting machines were interfered with, possibly by Russian hackers.

Such theories have spread on social media - and one of the widely-quoted posts is by Heba, who is a PR and fashion consultant in New York. She lives with her husband and children in New Jersey.

Her post read: 'The Department of Justice is tallying phone calls regarding those who want the 2016 Vote Audited. A shift of just 55,000 Trump votes to Hillary in PA, MI & WI is all that is Needed to Win.

'They are starting to recognize there is something really off about the election results as they come in. Considering everything that is at stake, a vote audit should be done.

'Call the DOJ .... and tell them you want the votes audited. Even if it's busy, keep calling. It takes a few times to get through because of all the calls being made.'

Family: Huma Abedin's sister Heba attended a fundraiser at the Democratic National Convention in Philadelphia in July with Anthony Weiner, before another sexting scandal ended his marriage

Helping out: Heba Abedin and her mother, Dr Saleh Mahmood Abedin, assisted Huma with caring for her son Jordan after she separated from her pervert husband Anthony Weiner

The post was in quotation marks suggesting she had copied it from other posts. Identical ones were on Reddit, the online message board.

Underneath it Heba added: 'SHARE THIS WHERE POSSIBLE. SPREAD THE WORD'.

Among the others who shared similar posts was actress Debra Messing as it went viral. But the problem was that it was not true.

A DOJ spokesman said: 'The Justice Department does not tally the number of callers to determine whether federal action is warranted.

'Investigatory decisions are based solely on the facts and evidence as they relate to the federal statutes the department enforces'.

Heba's post is the latest to show that she supported Clinton as strongly as her sister, who has been close at the former Secretary of State for two decades and is the key member of her inner circle.

Heba had largely stayed out of the limelight during one of the most divisive election campaigns in modern history.

It is not clear if Heba was born in the US or Saudi Arabia, where her family moved when Huma was two years old.

Heba appears to have attended the Manarat school in Jeddah as Huma did before returning to the US to attend Marymount University where she got a BA in economics and public policy.

Heba supported Huma during the sexting revelations about her estranged husband Anthony Weiner.

His behavior ended their marriage this year when it DailyMail.com revealed he had been sexting a 15-year-old girl years after being exposed for doing the same thing with multiple women.

Since then she and their mother Dr Saleh Mahmood Abedin have been helping with childcare for Jordan, Huma and Weiner's son.

On the day of the final presidential debate, October 19, Heba tweeted: 'Thank god she doesn't have to be on a stage with him ... ever again!'

Close family relationship: Both the Abedin sisters and their mom have been photographed with Huma's boss, in their mother's case at the Saudi university where she worked when Clinton was Secretary of State

Gone: Heba Abedin deleted her post - but too late to avoid it being reposted thousands of time among Clinton followers. She now quotes Maya Angelou

Given the date Heba appears to be referring to Trump and Clinton.

In 2013 in response to speculation about her sister and Weiner, Heba tweeted: 'You can't possibly believe everything you read'.

Not everything has been serious. In 2006 while working for the New York Sun newspaper, she appeared in an article which described her as an 'East Side mother' who wanted to lose weight after giving birth.

Heba said: 'You see Katie Holmes looking fantastic two weeks after having a baby. Everyone's trying to keep up.

'Everyone thinks you should fit into your prematernity jeans even if you just gave birth. You're not supposed to let motherhood slow you down'.

Heba said that she liked the 'hot mom' trend and that she felt sexy and empowered even in jeans.

Heba has been seen as a number events with her sister and Clinton, and was at Weiner's side for a fundraiser at the Democratic National Convention in Philadelphia.

On November 12, four days after Clinton lost the election to Trump, Heba took to Facebook to speak out once again.

She quoted a poem by Maya Angelou called Still I Rise which read: 'You may write me down in history, With your bitter, twisted lies, You may trod me in the very dirt, But still, like dust, I'll rise'.

Abedin being fooled by fake news comes as her sister's former colleagues in the doomed Clinton campaign accused President-elect Donald Trump of doing precisely that - over the issue of the election result.

On Sunday Trump claimed that millions had voted illegally, in response to the move by Jill Stein, the Green Party candidate, to

Jesse Ferguson, one of the campaign's former spokesmen, tweeted: 'Dear @twitter - I hear you close down accts promoting fake news and false conspiracies. Please consider deleting this one. Thanks.'