The personal Twitter account of Sen. Mike Lee (R-UT) was suspended for unknown reasons for at least an hour on Wednesday. The account was restored after Lee posted about the situation from his official congressional account.
“Twitter did not alert me ahead of time, nor have they yet offered an explanation for the suspension,” Lee tweeted. “My team and I are seeking answers.”
Just over an hour later, he tweeted from his now-reactivated personal account, announcing it had been restored. “Still no explanation from @Twitter as to what happened,” he said.
During the suspension, Lee’s personal account said only “Account suspended” and “Twitter suspends accounts that violate Twitter rules,” with no further explanation, The Hill reported.
Lee’s tweets prior to the suspension included skepticism of U.S. policies toward Ukraine. He also directly mentioned Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida in multiple tweets calling for the immediate release of Navy Lt. Ridge Alkonis, who is serving a three-year prison sentence over a car crash that killed two Japanese citizens in 2021.
The incident follows closely after the sudden and quickly-reversed suspension of Sen. Steve Daines (R-MT) in February. Daines was suspended over his profile picture, which showed him and his wife posing with an antelope they hunted, apparently in violation of Twitter’s violent content policies.
Daines’ account was reinstated in a matter of hours. In a statement, Daines said Twitter CEO Elon Musk reached out to him personally and “acted quickly” to restore his account.
Musk, who has championed ideals of free speech since buying Twitter in October, tweeted at the time that the policy that resulted in Daines’ suspension “is being fixed.” At the time of writing, there have not been any changes to the policy since prior to Daines’ suspension.
This was a breaking news story. The details were periodically updated as more information became available.
