DECEMBER 29, 2019
A retweet by President Donald Trump, naming the alleged whistle-blower whose complaint triggered the congressional inquiry that resulted in his impeachment this month, was restored late Saturday after being hidden for much of the day.
The post, originally from the handle @surfermom77, was retweeted by Trump around midnight Friday and by Saturday morning was no longer visible in the president’s Twitter feed. CNN first reported late Saturday that the temporary removal followed a Twitter glitch that affected certain accounts, not deliberate action to delete the tweet by Trump or someone with access to his Twitter account.
“Due to an outage with one of our systems, tweets on account profiles were visible to some, but not others,” the social media site posted on its @TwitterSupport account.
‘100% Trump Supporter’
As of Sunday morning the message was again visible to Trump’s 68 million Twitter followers.
The tweet identifies a person it says is the whistle-blower: the person who first alerted members of Congress to the president’s conduct in his July 25 phone call with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy.
The poster, @Surfermom77 or “Sophia,” describes herself as living in California and a “100% Trump supporter.”
On Saturday afternoon the account, which posts a variety of pro-Trump and anti-Democratic material, was shown on Twitter as having been “temporarily restricted.” It’s now been restored, and carries Trump’s photo as its profile picture.
The White House didn’t respond to a request for comment on Saturday.
Trump has posted about the whistle-blower dozens of times over the months and also suggested in comments to reporters that he would like to unmask or face the individual.
“Like every American, I deserve to meet my accuser,” Trump tweeted in September.
On Thursday Trump also retweeted a link to a Dec. 3 article from the conservative Washington Examiner newspaper that carried the name of the alleged whistle-blower.
Attorney Andrew Bakaj, who represents the whistle-blower, lamented in a tweet on Saturday that U.S. lawmakers, who in the past have championed the rights of whistle-blowers, including Iowa Republican Senator Chuck Grassley, have shown “deafening” silence recently.
“This is a defining moment where legacies will either be solidified or destroyed,” Bakaj said on Twitter.
Courtesy/Source: Bloomberg
