Skip to content
Link copied to clipboard

After Twitter temporarily suspends former Republican Congressman Lou Barletta’s account, he says he’s ‘not buying’ the reason why

Barletta’s account was reactivated around midday Monday after Twitter told him his tweets had been mistakenly flagged. He remains outraged by the incident.

U.S. Rep. Lou Barletta walks through Hazleton, Pa., on July 6, 2018.
U.S. Rep. Lou Barletta walks through Hazleton, Pa., on July 6, 2018.Read moreTNS

Twitter suspended the account of former U.S. Rep Lou Barletta over the weekend, around the same time that social media platforms of President Donald Trump, whom Barletta ardently supports, were silenced as well.

Barletta’s account was reactivated around midday Monday after Twitter told him his profile had been mistakenly flagged. But Barletta, who is no longer in public life, said in an interview that he remained outraged that the company took the step against a private citizen voicing his opinions and is “not buying” the company’s reasoning for the temporary ban.

Twitter said in a statement that the account was “suspended in error for perceived violations of our impersonation policy. This has been reversed and the account has been reinstated.”

“I believe they’re picking and choosing First Amendment rights,” Barletta said, noting Twitter restored his account after several inquiries from reporters. “This is a dangerous road where a private citizen really has nowhere to go if this happens to them.”

» READ MORE: Does Twitter’s ban violate Trump’s free-speech rights? Likely not, but it raises questions about social media platforms, Philly experts say.

There is no evidence the suspension was purposeful. Twitter suspensions were not widespread among Republican users. However, Barletta’s team shared a screenshot of an earlier email from Twitter support that said his suspension was “due to systems that find and remove multiple accounts in bulk, and yours was flagged by mistake.”

First Amendment lawyers say the Constitution protects against the government, not a private company such as Twitter, censoring a citizen’s speech, but recent events raise questions about what could be considered protected speech.

Twitter didn’t notify him of the suspension in advance, said Barletta, who found out about it Sunday when he got a call from a reporter with the Wilkes-Barre Times Leader asking why Barletta’s account was down.

» READ MORE: As Lou Barletta’s immigration law failed his political brand was born

The call came two days after Twitter permanently suspended Trump’s account “due to the risk of further incitement of violence,” it said, after he spurned a mob of his supporters to siege the U.S. Capitol in an attack that left five dead, and as extremists talked online of further violence ahead of the inauguration of President-elect Joe Biden.

Barletta stands by Trump, defending his actions on Wednesday and calling the president’s social media suspension “a slippery slope.”

Barletta also stood by messages sent on a separate Twitter account on Sunday and Monday before his main profile was reactivated, indicating he remained “outraged and shocked.”

“No one person or business should have the power to pick & choose what voices are heard,” he wrote Sunday.

Barletta’s recent messages did not incite violence. He tweeted of the insurrection: “What is happening in DC is totally unacceptable and un-American. Violence and destruction are NEVER the answer.”

He criticized lawmakers calling for impeachment or the invocation of the 25th Amendment, which would remove Trump from office. He also called on Pennsylvania Gov. Tom Wolf to pass fair election laws and “restore election integrity,” and hours before the riot at the Capitol, he urged Congress to delay certification of Biden’s win due to baseless claims of voter fraud in Pennsylvania.

“I didn’t see anything on there that was offensive,” he said. “Questioning the integrity of the election here in Pennsylvania doesn’t seem over the top.”

He said he would never encourage anyone to commit violence, and the attack on the Capitol “saddened him” as a former member of Congress.

In 2018, the former Hazleton mayor did not seek a fifth term in the U.S. House of Representatives, and was instead handpicked by Trump to challenge U.S. Sen. Bob Casey Jr. in an unsuccessful bid for Casey’s Senate seat.

Since then, Barletta started the Leaders Only Unite political action committee, or LOU PAC, which supports candidates who are tough on immigration and private construction of the border wall, and campaigned for Trump.

He continues to support the president, he said, and will continue to express his opinions online and elsewhere.

“I’m not going to silence my voice. I’m going to continue to speak out for what I believe,” he said. “Hopefully this [suspension] won’t happen again by mistake. But nobody should be silent in America. That’s what makes our country different than other countries. We have the right to speak out, whether your voice is conservative or liberal. Everyone should be treated the same.”