Part five of the Twitter Files dropped Monday afternoon detailing the social media platform’s decision to indefinitely ban Donald Trump two days after the January 6 Capitol attack.
The latest installment of the bombshell report reveals that even some employees for the social media giant warned of the dangers of censoring the U.S. president.
It also shows correspondence proving that Twitter employees assigned to evaluate Trump’s tweets conclude that the then-president had not violated Twitter policies.
One employee wrote in internal correspondence on January 7, 2021: ‘Maybe because I am from China, I deeply understand how censorship can destroy the public conversation.’
The report shows that Twitter employees assigned to evaluate Trump’s tweets conclude that the then-president had not violated Twitter policies, but critics at the top said his posts could be ‘coded incitement’ as a justification for finally booting him from the platform.
‘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,’ Elon Musk wrote in a tweet about the company he now runs.
Trump, who was president at the time, was on his final warning from Twitter when he tweeted twice the morning of January 8, 2021.
Part Five of the so-called Twitter Files dropped Monday afternoon, detailing the social media giant’s decision to indefinitely ban Donald Trump, who was president at the time, from the platform
Internal correspondence revealed through the bombshell report shows that those assigned to evaluate Trump’s tweets didn’t see proof of incitement
The first tweet praised the ‘great American patriots who voted for me’ in a further push that he was the legitimate winner of the 2020 presidential election.
An hour later, Trump tweeted: ‘To all of those who have asked, I will not be going to the Inauguration on January 20th.’
Twitter Files co-author Bari Weiss wrote that ‘Twitter’s safety team decides that Trump’s 7:44 am ET tweet is also not in violation.’
Specifically in regards to the second tweet, a Twitter employee wrote: ‘[I]t’s a clear no vio. It’s just to say he’s not attending the inauguration,’ they wrote.
Just 90 minutes after determining Trump’s tweets were not in violation of Twitter policy, then-Head of Legal, Policy, and Trust Vijaya Gadde asked whether his posts could be ‘coded incitement to further violence.’
Shortly after, Twitter employees decided to interpret Trump’s use of ‘American Patriots’ to refer to rioters, which they then suggested could violate Twitter’s Glorification of Violence policy.
This gave critics the ammunition needed to argue for Trump’s removal.
Then Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey then got involved when Twitter executives hosted a 30-minute all-staff meeting. Dorsey and Gadde questioned why Trump wasn’t banned yet, according to the Twitter Files.
Approximately and hour-and-a-half after Twitter staff determined Trump’s tweets were not in violation of Twitter policy, then-Head of Legal, Policy, and Trust Vijaya Gadde suggested his posts could be ‘coded incitement to further violence’
Twitter employees celebrated when Trump’s accounted was banned on January 8, 2021 – two days after the Capitol riot
Twitter previously argued that they would not remove world leaders from the platform because it would hide important information from the public. They went back on that in January 2021 when Twitter indefinitely banned the account of the President of the United States.
The Twitter Files points, however, to other world leaders who arguably more aggressively violated Twitter policies if they were to go off the same standards to which they held Trump.
Republicans have also used this as an attack line, claiming the platform needs to hold all world leaders to the same standard, and arguing Trump was solely banned due to liberal political leanings of higher-ups at Twitter.
One tweet mentioned in the Twitter Files was from Iran’s Ayatollah Ali Khamenei in June 2018 writing: ‘#Israel is a malignant cancerous tumor in the West Asian region that has to be removed and eradicated: it is possible and it will happen.’
Twitter decided not to delete or ban the Ayatollah.
Another notable post, that was deleted for ‘glorifying violence’ but did not result in a total ban, was from the former Malaysian Prime Minister in October 2020 who said Muslims had a ‘right’ to ‘kill millions of French people.’
Following the Capitol riot on January 6, 2021, Twitter employees organized to demand a ban on Trump’s account.
‘There is a lot of employee advocacy happening,’ one Twitter employee said, according to the internal documents revealed.
The Twitter Files are a compilation of internal company messages at Twitter being released by independent journalists Bari Weiss and Matthew Taibbi on the platform itself. The bombshell internal correspondence shows what led to Trump getting booted from Twitter, as well as the decision to suppress the Hunter Biden laptop story just one month before the 2020 presidential election.
Trump’s two tweets the morning of January 8, 2021 are what led to his indefinite ban from the platform that same day even though employees admitted the posts did not violate Twitter Policy
![One Twitter employee wrote in internal correspondence: '[I]t's a clear no vio. It's just to say he's not attending the inauguration'](https://i.dailymail.co.uk/1s/2022/12/12/19/65507191-11530029-image-a-30_1670874577718.jpg)
One Twitter employee wrote in internal correspondence: ‘[I]t’s a clear no vio. It’s just to say he’s not attending the inauguration’
Twitter employees started to more openly question why Trump wasn’t already banned after his supporters descended on the U.S. Capitol to protest the results of the election and demanding Congress not certify the win for Joe Biden.
‘I am still struggling to understand the decision not to ban Trump altogether, given he is inciting people to violence that has lead (sic) to people being killed,’ one employee wrote in internal communications after the site flagged Trump’s tweets but did not, at the time, boot him from the platform.
‘This is the elephant in the room,’ another employee responded.
But Twitter staff assigned to specifically analyze the then-president’s tweets concluded Trump had not violated Twitter policies.
‘I think we’d have a hard time saying this is incitement,’ one staffer wrote on January 8, 2021 – the same day Trump was banned.
Another employee agreed, writing: ‘Don’t see the incitement angle here.’
Twitter policy official Anika Navaroli wrote: ‘I also am not seeing clear or coded incitement in the DJT tweet.’
