Twitter banned the account of Project Veritas founder James O’Keefe on Thursday.
A spokesperson for the social media platform said the account “was permanently suspended for violating the Twitter Rules on platform manipulation and spam.”
The move follows multiple disclosures this week from an undercover operation in which a CNN technical director was documented on video boasting that the cable news giant contributed to the 2020 defeat of former President Donald Trump from office and talking about how the coronavirus pandemic is “gangbusters with ratings.”
O’Keefe said he will be filing a lawsuit against Twitter.
“I am suing Twitter for defamation because they said I, James O’Keefe, ‘operated fake accounts.’ This is false, this is defamatory, and they will pay. Section 230 may have protected them before, but it will not protect them from me. The complaint will be filed Monday,” he said in a statement obtained by the Washington Examiner on Thursday.
A Twitter spokesperson said O’Keefe had broken Twitter’s platform manipulation policy by misleading others on Twitter by operating fake accounts and added that “you can’t artificially amplify or disrupt conversations through the use of multiple accounts.”
Mario Balaban of Project Veritas told the Washington Examiner that two other Twitter accounts associated with Project Veritas, besides O’Keefe’s account, have already been banned by Twitter, and so there are no other active Twitter accounts that the group uses.
The account for Project Veritas was permanently suspended from Twitter, and O’Keefe was temporarily locked from his account for violating the tech giant’s “private information policy” in February.
“Twitter won’t tell us what fake accounts they’re talking about. They’re making it up, it’s all just nonsense,” Balaban said.
Balaban added that O’Keefe would be on Sean Hannity’s show on Fox News on Thursday night to explain his Twitter ban and defend himself.
Project Veritas is an investigative reporting project that has a mixed record on its sting operations over the years, including allegations of misleading editing.
