WASHINGTON: Former United States (US) president Donald Trump has asked a federal judge in Florida to force Twitter to restore his account, arguing the company improperly suspended him after receiving pressure from members of Congress.
According to details, Trump filed a request for preliminary injunction against Twitter in the US District Court for the Southern District of Florida, arguing the social media company was “coerced” by members of the US 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 US Capitol on January 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.
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 several news agencies.
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.
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.”
