Twitter refused to provide any evidence Project Veritas Founder James O’Keefe, who was permanently suspended from the platform Thursday after his latest exposé on CNN trended for days, operated fake accounts to justify the ban.
Twitter kicked the conservative investigative journalist who had nearly one million followers off its website claiming O’Keefe violated rules for platform manipulation and spam, and accused him of using fake accounts.
A Twitter spokesperson officially declined The Federalist’s inquiries into what accounts O’Keefe was allegedly operating Friday.
O’Keefe announced Thursday afternoon, shortly after the indefinite suspension, that he would file a lawsuit against the company on Monday.
“I am suing Twitter for defamation because they said I, James O’Keefe, ‘operated fake accounts.'” O’Keefe wrote in an emailed statement to The Federalist. “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.”
The suspension came as O’Keefe’s latest project featured a CNN executive touting the network’s “propaganda” operation to oust President Donald Trump. The remarks were caught on hidden camera by an employee with Project Veritas on a series of dates with CNN Technical Director Charlie Chester where they met on the online dating app, Tinder.
“We got Trump out,” Chester says on tape. “I am a hundred percent going to say it, and I a hundred percent believe it that if it wasn’t for CNN, I don’t know that Trump would have got voted out.”