By Joséphine Li

Late Friday evening, Twitter said that after a close review of recent tweets from the president’s account, it had suspended President Trump from its platform due to the risk of further incitement of violence.

Twitter issued a statement last Wednesday warning Trump that additional violations of Twitter’s rules would potentially lead to a ban. Two days later, Twitter’s decision followed two recent tweets by Trump encouraging his supporters and announcing his intention not to attend Joe Biden’s inauguration. Twitter said the tweet about Trump’s supporters showed that “He plans to continue to support, empower, and shield those who believe he won the election,” The tweet violated twitter’s policy against glorification of violence. 

The other tweet concerning the inauguration could be seen as a further statement that the election was illegitimate. Twitter also said that it could be interpreted as Trump implying that the inauguration would be a “safe” target for violence because he would not be attending.

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Twitter said in a statement that it will enforce its policy against ban evasions to ensure that Trump does not circumvent his personal account’s suspension. “If it is clear that another account is being used for the purposes of evading a ban, it will also be suspended.” 

For government accounts, such as @POTUS and @WhiteHouse, these accounts will be transitioned over to the new administration in due course. Twitter will not suspend those accounts but will take action to restrict their use.

Twitter’s policy also does not allow Trump from directing a third party to run a Twitter account on his behalf. Last Friday evening, Trump sought to test Twitter’s ban evasion policy, when he or someone acting on his behalf posted four tweets from the @POTUS account. The tweet was removed by Twitter almost immediately.

Twitter revealed that the account of Trump campaign had also been permanently banned. Before @TeamTrump was suspended, it was seen sharing the same tweets that Trump attempted to post from the @POTUS account.

Twitter specifically addresses that the suspension of Trump’s account @realDonaldTrump was not against Trump personally.