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Trump pleads to court to restore his banned Twitter account

Saturday, 02 October 2021 7:14 PM [ Last Update: Saturday, 02 October 2021 7:14 PM ]

This picture taken on August 10, 2020, shows the Twitter account of then US President Donald Trump as displayed on a mobile phone on August 10, 2020, in Arlington, Virginia. (Photo by AFP)

Former US President Donald Trump has asked a federal judge in Florida to ask social media platform Twitter to restore his account.

Trump on Friday filed the request for preliminary injunction against Twitter in the US District Court for the Southern District of Florida.

Twitter banned Trump from using the platform in January citing a risk of incitement of violence.

The company said Trump's praise of protesters who staged a deadly attack in Capitol Hill on January 6 was a “severe violation” of Twitter's regulations.

In the attack at least five people died, including a Capitol police officer, prompting social networking platform Facebook to suspend Trump's media account.

Facebook bans former US president Trump for 2 years

Facebook has suspended former US president Donald Trump for two years, saying his praise of protesters who stormed the Capitol earlier this year was a “severe violation.”

Twitter and YouTube followed suit, citing further risk of violence and incitement by the then president. Twitter at first put a 12-hour ban on Trump’s account for “repeated and severe violations of our Civic Integrity policy” after he posted tweets repeating lies that the election was stolen. The platform later made the ban permanent.

Now, Trump is seeking a preliminary injunction against Twitter’s ban. Trump, who has described Twitter as “a major avenue of public discourse”, argues that the company, “coerced by members of the United States Congress,” is censoring him.

“Our case will prove this censorship is unlawful, it's unconstitutional and it's completely un-American,” Trump said at his golf club in Bedminster, New Jersey in July.

Legal experts maintain that the lawsuit over censorship by the social media giant is doomed to fail.

Facebook, Twitter and Google, and their CEOs, have been threatened by Trump.before.