Trump asks U.S. judge to force Twitter to restart his account
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[October 02, 2021]
By Akriti Sharma
(Reuters) -Former U.S. President Donald
Trump asked a federal judge in Florida on Friday to ask Twitter to
restore his account, which the company removed in January citing a risk
of incitement of violence.
Trump filed a request for preliminary injunction against Twitter in the
U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Florida, arguing the
social media company was "coerced" by members of the U.S. Congress to
suspend his account.
Twitter and several other social media platforms banned Trump from their
services after a mob of his supporters attacked the U.S. Capitol in a
deadly riot on Jan. 6.
That assault followed a speech by Trump in which he reiterated false
claims that his election loss in November was because of widespread
fraud, an assertion rejected by multiple courts and state election
officials.
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Twitter "exercises a degree of power and control over political
discourse in this country that is immeasurable, historically
unprecedented, and profoundly dangerous to open democratic debate,"
Trump's lawyers said in the filing. The filing was reported earlier by
Bloomberg.
Twitter declined to comment on the filing when contacted by Reuters.
At the time of removing Trump's account permanently, Twitter said his
tweets had violated the platform's policy barring "glorification of
violence". The company said at the time that Trump's tweets that led to
the removal were "highly likely" to encourage people to replicate what
happened in the Capitol riots.
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![](../images/100221pics/news_f43.jpg)
Former U.S. President Donald Trump speaks at a rally in Perry,
Georgia, U.S. September 25, 2021. REUTERS/Dustin Chambers/Files
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Before he was blocked, Trump had more than 88 million
followers on Twitter and used it as his social media megaphone.
In the court filing, Trump argued Twitter allowed the Taliban to
tweet regularly about their military victories across Afghanistan,
but censored him during his presidency by labeling his tweets as
"misleading information" or indicating they violated the company's
rules against "glorifying violence".
In July Trump sued Twitter, Facebook Inc and Alphabet Inc's Google,
as well as their chief executives, alleging they unlawfully silence
conservative viewpoints.
(Reporting by Akriti Sharma and Kanishka Singh in Bengaluru; Editing
by William Mallard and Frances Kerry)
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