- The official
Twitter account for theTrump campaign was locked as of Thursday morning, according to communications director Tim Murtaugh. - It follows efforts by platforms to limit the circulation of a dubious New York Post article with incendiary claims about Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden and his son Hunter.
- Murtaugh tweeted from his personal account a screenshot of the campaign's account status, showing a notice from Twitter saying it had been locked.
- The account was tweeting again around an hour and a half later.
- The campaign account's tweet, which is no longer available, contained "clips of Joe Biden lying," Murtaugh said, without evidence.
- A spokesperson for Twitter told Business Insider that accounts that violate its privacy and hacked materials policy may be required to delete such tweets.
The official Trump campaign Twitter account was locked on Thursday after it posted clips relating to the recent New York Post story about Hunter Biden, according to its communications director Tim Murtaugh.
The account was active and tweeting again around an hour and a half after Murtaugh first said it had been locked.
The original campaign tweet which Murtaugh said triggered the action by Twitter was taken down, though the account appeared to post the same thing again after the lock ended.
It includes a video which the campaign said, without evidence, amounts to Joe Biden "lying" about his son Hunter, edited with lines from the New York Post story which claim to contradict him.
"Twitter has locked out @TeamTrump for posting video of clips of Joe Biden lying about never speaking to Hunter about foreign business deals. Includes snips of @nypost exposing the lies," Murtaugh said in his tweet.
"Biden doesn't dispute the authenticity of the docs. STILL protecting Biden from bad story."
Murtaugh's tweet also included a screenshot of the @TeamTrump account which said it had been locked for "violating our rules against posting private information."
The account has more than 2 million followers and had been sharing numerous clips of President Donald Trump's reaction to the New York Post article published on Wednesday.
—Tim Murtaugh - Download the Trump 2020 app today! (@TimMurtaugh) October 15, 2020
A Twitter spokesperson told Business Insider that accounts that tweet materials or links which violate its hacked materials policy or its private information policy "may be required to delete those Tweets," linking to a thread explaining further.
The thread refers to Twitter's reasoning from when it blocked the circulation of the controversial New York Post article earlier Wednesday.
As Business Insider's Sonam Sheth has reported, the New York Post story has numerous question marks over its accuracy and sourcing.
Conservatives have been in uproar over the actions social media companies have taken to limit the sharing of the New York Post article, as Business Insider's Tom Porter reported.
It is the second Twitter account of a Trump campaign figure that has been locked for sharing the article, after White House spokesperson Kayleigh McEnany's account was also suspended.
Twitter founder Jack Dorsey earlier tweeted an admission that company communication over this decision "was not great" and that blocking sharing of links without providing context for the decision was "unacceptable."