The violation of Twitter’s rules included the Trump campaign calling Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden a “liar” and posting a video about Hunter Biden’s business dealings is a violation of their policy, according to the Washington Times.
“Your account has been locked,” the standard Twitter message read. “What happened? We have determined that this account violated the Twitter Rules. Specifically, for: Violating our rules against posting private information.”
Twitter has suspended @TeamTrump for posting a video calling Joe Biden a liar who has been ripping off our country for years, as it relates to the @nypost article.
19 days out from the election. Z9FFzridyr
— Mike Hahn (@mikehahn_) October 15, 2020
The tweet in question read: “Joe Biden is a liar who has been ripping off our country for years.”
The Trump campaign also posted a link to a video about Hunter Biden’s overseas business dealings, specifically referring to the New York Post which published emails suggesting Hunter Biden introduced his father, then the vice president, to a top executive at Ukrainian natural gas firm Burisma Holdings in 2015 at Hunter’s request. Fox News notes it has not independently verified the reporting.
The story gets stranger. The emails supposedly turned up on the hard drive of a laptop dropped off at a repair shop in 2019. A copy of that hard drive then ended up in the hands of Robert Costello, a lawyer for Rudy Giuliani, a personal attorney for President Trump.
Even with all this going on, a Trump campaign official says the Hunter Biden video the campaign posted can still be found on Trump’s own Twitter account.
Twitter also blocked White House Press Secretary Kayleigh McEnany for sharing the New York Post report on Hunter Biden on her personal account. The Trump campaign shared what appears to be a screenshot of an email McEnany received from Twitter, alerting her that her account “has been locked.”
Twitter has also suspended a number of fake accounts purporting to be owned by black supporters of US President Donald Trump. The accounts were suspended because they broke its rules on spam and platform manipulation, according to the BBC.
Many of the accounts used identical language, including the phrase: “YES IM BLACK AND IM VOTING FOR TRUMP!!!,” and that is a dead giveaway that something is wrong. Some of the accounts used photos of Black men that had appeared in news stories, with some of the accounts having thousands of followers.
Twitter forbids using the platform “to artificially amplify or suppress information or engage in behaviour that manipulates or disrupts people’s experience” on the site.