Samantha Markle's Twitter was suspended following a report that her account had been harassing Meghan Markle for years

• Samantha Markle's Twitter account was suspended on Monday following a BuzzFeed investigation.
• BuzzFeed reported Samantha appears to have been tweeting lies and criticisms of Meghan for years.

A Twitter account believed to belong to Meghan Markle's half-sister, Samantha Markle, was suspended from the social media platform on Monday.

The account, @TheMarkleSammy, was suspended after BuzzFeed News' Ellie Hall reported that Samantha appeared to have been using it to share criticisms and lies about Meghan for years, including that Meghan did not actually give birth to her children. A representative for Twitter confirmed to Insider on Monday that the account was suspended for violating its ban evasion policy.

Representatives for the Duke and Duchess of Sussex did not immediately respond to Insider's request for comment.

When contacted by Insider for this story, Samantha's lawyer, Douglas Kahle, denied BuzzFeed's allegations, said the account had been hacked, and suggested the screenshots included in BuzzFeed's story were edited.

"Samantha's Twitter account appears to have been hacked; someone changed her password; and, some of the Twitter screenshots that have appeared in the media very recently appear to have been altered or 'photo-shopped,'" Kahle said in a statement to Insider. "Additionally, as you may know, certain individuals can flood an online media company, such as Twitter, with complaints about a particular account and have such account 'suspended.'"

Kahle continued: "Among other things, that appears to be what happened here, considering certain individuals are online admitting to such behavior. However, due to the urgency of this matter, we are still investigating."

But BuzzFeed's Hall reported that she had DMed with someone who appeared to be Samantha through the account in question and that Samantha did not tell her the account — which Hall had been following since January — had been hacked before the BuzzFeed story was published.

Meghan and Samantha are half-sisters through Meghan's estranged father Thomas Markle, and Samantha, 57, is 17 years older than Meghan.

Samantha has been one of Meghan's loudest critics since her relationship with Prince Harry became public knowledge. She published a book called "The Diary of Princess Pushy's Sister Part 1" about Meghan in 2021.

The tweets apparently written by Samantha that Hall uncovered often targeted the validity or existence of Meghan and Harry's children. According to screenshots published by BuzzFeed, the account had falsely suggested Meghan faked her pregnancies and used a surrogate; that Harry is not the biological father of his children; that Meghan faked her 2020 miscarriage; and that Archie and Lilibet aren't even real.

There is no evidence for any of these claims, as BuzzFeed noted.

As Insider previously reported, Meghan was frequently criticized when she was pregnant with Archie for things like touching her bump too much. Meghan said during her 2021 interview with Oprah Winfrey that she suffered from suicidal thoughts during her pregnancy with Archie because of the pressure of royal life.

To the press, Samantha has repeatedly tried to assert that she and Meghan were close during their younger years.

"You know, people don't understand we were very much integrated into each other's lives. She was the baby in our household, we never addressed each other as half-sister," Samantha said during an interview with "Good Morning Britain" in 2018. "We had the same father, she was in our lives. We had two households, there was a bridge. We were united. So I thought, why doesn't she call me?"

But during her 2021 interview with Oprah Winfrey, Meghan denied her sister's account, saying she hadn't seen Samantha in 20 years.

"I grew up as an only child, which everyone who grew up around me knows," Meghan said at the time, going on to say that her sister was known as Samantha Grant up until Meghan became involved with the monarchy.

"The last time I saw her must've been at least 18 or 19 years ago, and before that, 10 years before that," she went on to say of Samantha.

Samantha is currently suing Meghan for defamation over the comments made during her interview with Winfrey.