Former US President Donald Trump has urged a federal judge to launch a preliminary injunction against Twitter in order to force the social media platform to temporarily reinstate the ex-POTUS' account.
In a court filing on Friday, Trump's lawyers claimed that Twitter "exercises a degree of power and control over political discourse in this country that is immeasurable, historically unprecedented, and profoundly dangerous to open democratic debate".
The filing comes a week after the 45th US president's legal team filed a lawsuit claiming that Twitter's terms of service could not be applied to Trump while he was president of the United States, insisting that at the time of Twitter banning him from the platform, he was using his account as a government entity, not as a personal page.
The move followed Trump filing a class action lawsuit on 7 July targeting Facebook, Google, and Twitter, as well as their CEOs – Mark Zuckerberg, Sundar Pichai, and Jack Dorsey, respectively, in a bid to restore his online profile after he was suspended from the social media networks after the January US Capitol mayhem.
In the lawsuit, Trump argued that he was banned for "exercising his constitutional right of free speech", pledging to "hold big tech accountable".
This was preceded by Twitter's Chief Financial Officer Ned Segal telling CNBC that Trump's permanent suspension from the social media platform will remain in place indefinitely, even if he runs again during the 2024 presidential election cycle.
"Our policies are designed to make sure that people are not inciting violence, and if anybody does that, we would have to remove them from the service and our policies don't allow people to come back", Segal stressed.
Trump Banned From Twitter
Trump was permanently booted from Twitter on 8 January, two days after his supporters violently stormed the US Capitol on 6 January, causing widespread damage and leaving five dead, in a failed attempt to block the efforts of Congress to certify the results of the 2020 presidential election.
After initially applying a 12-hour suspension on the former president's account, Twitter announced it would impose a permanent ban in light of the "risk of further incitement of violence" that purportedly stemmed from Trump's online rhetoric.
The 45th president was also ousted from other social media platforms such as Facebook, Instagram, and YouTube. Even though Trump then managed to eventually be aquitted in a Senate trial pertaining to charges of inciting insurrection with his speeches and claims of election fraud, Facebook and Twitter kept their permanent suspension measures in place.
During the 6 January events, Trump tweeted about a "sacred landslide victory" in what he described as the "fraudulent" November 2020 presidential election, later telling protesters to go home.
"We have to have peace. We have to have law and order. We have to respect our great people in law and order. We don't want anybody hurt", Trump stressed in a now-deleted tweet.