Twitter Files Part Five: How Twitter Twisted Rules to Justify Banning Trump

The latest release of Twitter Files reveals how the platform banned then-President Donald Trump in January 2021, as employees compared him to Hitler, despite internal assessments that Trump had not violated the platform’s rules.

The Free Press founder Bari Weiss tweeted part five of the “Twitter Files” on Monday, revealing more details of how the platform justified its ban of Trump, whose account was recently restored by new Twitter CEO Elon Musk. Weiss cited two Jan. 8, 2021, tweets from Trump that Twitter employees used to justify his ban, despite internal Twitter communications saying the tweets didn’t violate any rules. Musk emphasized Twitter’s censorship of a sitting president without grounds when he quote-tweeted Weiss’s thread, saying, “Under pressure from hundreds of activist employees, Twitter deplatforms Trump, a sitting US President, even though they themselves acknowledge that he didn’t violate the rules.”

Weiss did not mention Trump’s Jan. 6 tweet specifically calling for peace at the Capitol. She did note that Twitter staff “assigned to evaluate tweets quickly concluded that Trump had *not* violated Twitter’s policies,” particularly not on grounds of incitement.