Twitter permanently banned James O’Keefe Thursday. The Project Veritas founder spent the preceding days posting videos taken of a CNN employee without that employee’s knowledge, in keeping with his organization’s practice of coverted recorded content, but in violation of Twitter’s policies.
O’Keefe, who had over 900,000 followers at the time of his suspension, told TheWrap that he plans to sue the social media platform.
“The account you referenced (@JamesOKeefeIII) was permanently suspended for violating the Twitter Rules on platform manipulation and spam,” a Twitter spokesperson confirmed. “As outlined in our policy on platform manipulation and spam, ‘You can’t mislead others on Twitter by operating fake accounts,’ and ‘you can’t artificially amplify or disrupt conversations through the use of multiple accounts.’”
The rep declined to elaborate on the claim that O’Keefe was running multiple fake accounts, including how many he was running or how they were used.
In his statement, O’Keefe said, “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.”
In February, Twitter banned the Project Veritas account after the right-wing activist group posted a video confronting a Facebook vice president outside his home.
Twitter, in a message to Private Veritas that was shared with TheWrap, initially said the group’s account was locked for sharing private information. Later, a Twitter rep told TheWrap that Project Veritas’ account was banned for “repeated violations of Twitter’s private information policy.”
Project Veritas, a self-described “non-profit journalism enterprise” noted for using secret recordings to expose “corruption” at mainstream media outlets and progressive groups, had more than 700,000 followers at the time it was banned.