This Guy Says He’s the Person Who Suspended Donald Trump’s Twitter Account This Month

TechCrunch tracked him down in Germany.

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For 11 minutes in November, President Donald Trump’s Twitter account was deactivated. Twitter said it was an accident, and they blamed a contractor. TechCrunch claims to have found the man behind the act: Bahtiyar Duysak, who says he was working with the customer support team at Twitter’s Trust and Safety Division. 

Duysak told TechCrunch that it was all a “mistake” and that he didn’t think Twitter would go so far as to temporarily shut down Trump’s account. “I didn’t do any crime or anything evil, but I feel like Pablo Escobar,” Duysak told TechCrunch, “and slowly it’s getting really annoying.” 

TechCrunch reports

His last day at Twitter was mostly uneventful, he says. There were many goodbyes, and he worked up until the last hour before his computer access was to be shut off. Near the end of his shift, the fateful alert came in.

This is where Trump’s behavior intersects with Duysak’s work life. Someone reported Trump’s account on Duysak’s last day; as a final, throwaway gesture, he put the wheels in motion to deactivate it. Then he closed his computer and left the building.

Read the rest of his story here and watch the interview below. 

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WE CAME UP SHORT.

We just wrapped up a shorter-than-normal, urgent-as-ever fundraising drive and we came up about $45,000 short of our $300,000 goal.

That means we're going to have upwards of $350,000, maybe more, to raise in online donations between now and June 30, when our fiscal year ends and we have to get to break-even. And even though there's zero cushion to miss the mark, we won't be all that in your face about our fundraising again until June.

So we urgently need this specific ask, what you're reading right now, to start bringing in more donations than it ever has. The reality, for these next few months and next few years, is that we have to start finding ways to grow our online supporter base in a big way—and we're optimistic we can keep making real headway by being real with you about this.

Because the bottom line: Corporations and powerful people with deep pockets will never sustain the type of journalism Mother Jones exists to do. The only investors who won’t let independent, investigative journalism down are the people who actually care about its future—you.

And we hope you might consider pitching in before moving on to whatever it is you're about to do next. We really need to see if we'll be able to raise more with this real estate on a daily basis than we have been, so we're hoping to see a promising start.

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