Twitter says an outage caused a tweet from President Donald Trump including the alleged name of the anonymous whistleblower to disappear.
Just before midnight on Friday, Trump retweeted a message from Twitter user @Surfermom77, an account that claims to be a woman named Sophia who lives in California.
The tweet included the name of the CIA intelligence officer who first filed a complaint about suspicious contacts with Ukraine.
By Saturday morning, the post seemed to have disappeared from many users’ feeds, suggesting Trump had deleted it, though it could still be found in other ways, including on a website that logs every presidential tweet.
However, the retweet then reappeared on Saturday night.
Twitter told The Associated Press that an outage with one of its systems caused tweets on some accounts, including Trump’s, to be visible to some but not others.
Twitter claims an ‘outage’ caused a tweet from President Donald Trump allegedly naming the whistlerblower to disappear. Pictured: Trump answers questions from reporters after making a video call to the troops stationed worldwide at the Mar-a-Lago estate in Palm Beach Florida, on Christmas Eve
The tweet was sent out by Friday night, but was deleted by Saturday morning. CNN reporter Manu Raju tweeted about Trump’s tweets over weekend
The outage means that Trump (left) and/or his advisers did not delete the tweet..The whistleblower’s identity has been speculated on throughout pro-Trump media outlets
The whistleblower filed a complaint in August about one of Trump’s telephone conversations with Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelenskiy and other dealings with the Eastern European nation.
The complaint prompted House Democrats to launch a probe that ended with Trump’s impeachment earlier this month. The matter now heads to the Senate, where the Republican majority is expected to acquit the president.
The central points from the whistleblower’s complaint were confirmed during the House impeachment hearings by a string of diplomats and other career officials, many of whom testified in public.
The White House also released a transcript of Trump’s July 25 phone call with Zelenskiy, in which he asks for help investigating former Vice President Joe Biden and the Democratic National Committee.
Speculation about the whistleblower’s identity has been circulating in conservative media and on social media for months.
US whistleblower laws exist to protect the identity and careers of people who bring forward accusations of wrongdoing by government officials.
DailyMail.com will not be releasing the alleged name of the whistleblower.
Trump insists he did nothing wrong in his dealings with Ukraine and has asserted that the whistleblower made up the complaint, despite its corroboration by other officials.
He also argues that he has a right to face his accuser and has called on the whistleblower to step forward.
Trump insists he did nothing wrong in his dealings with Ukraine and has asserted that the whistleblower made up the complaint, despite its corroboration by other officials. Pictured: Trump speaks during a Keep America Great Rally at Kellogg Arena in Battle Creek, Michigan, this month
Trump retweeted this tweet from Talking Point USA founder Charlie Kirk, which the youth activist has sent out before, and Politifact has labeled ‘mostly false,’ saying there’s ‘no evidence’ that President Obama asked Ukraine to investigate Paul Manafort
For months, an array of right-wing personalities, amateur pro-Trump internet sleuths and some conservative news outlets have published what they claim to be details about the whistleblower, including name and career history.
The president himself has also been inching closer to outing the individual. Last week, Trump shared a tweet linking to a Washington Examiner article that included the alleged name.
Surfermom77, the Twitter handle on the post Trump retweeted, describes herself as a ‘100% Trump Supporter’ and California resident.
The account had nearly 79,000 followers as of Saturday afternoon. Some of its previous posts have denounced Islam and sharply criticized former President Barack Obama and other Democrats.
Surfermom77 has displayed some hallmarks of a Twitter bot, an automated account. A recent profile picture on the account, for instance, is a stock photo of a woman in business attire that is available for use online.
That photo was removed Saturday and replaced with an image of Trump.
A deeper look at Surfermom77’s account shows the user previously used two other stock photos as profile pictures, including one of a model wearing an orange hat used by a hat retailer.
Surfermom77 has also tweeted far more than typical users, more than 170,000 times since the account was activated in 2013.
Surfermom77 has posted, on average, 72 tweets a day, according to Nir Hauser, chief technology officer at VineSight, a technology firm that tracks online misinformation.
‘That’s not something most humans are doing,’ Hauser said.
President Trump has come under fire for posting a tweet which links to an article naming the alleged whistleblower who kickstarted the current impeachment inquiry
While many bots only repost benign information like cat photos, others have been used to spread disinformation or polarizing claims, as Russian bots did in the lead up to the 2016 election.
In past years, Surfermom77 has described herself as a teacher, historian, documentary author and model. Attempts to reach the person behind the account by telephone on Saturday were unsuccessful. An email address could not be found.
Facebook has a policy banning posts that name the alleged whistleblower. But Twitter, which doesn’t have such a rule, has not removed the tweet from Supermom77 or tweets from others who have named the alleged whistleblower.
‘The Tweet you referenced is not a violation of the Twitter Rules,’ the company wrote in a statement emailed to The Associated Press.
Some details about the whistleblower that have been published online by Trump´s supporters have been inaccurate or misrepresented.
For example, a photo shared widely on social media last month was circulated by Facebook, Reddit and Twitter users who wrongly claimed it showed the whistleblower with Obama´s staffers outside the White House as Trump moved in.
The individual in the photo actually was R David Edelman, a former special assistant to Obama on economic and tech policy.
Edelman debunked the claim on his Twitter account and told the AP he received threats online as a result of the false claims
This is not the first time Trump has tweeted about the whistleblower.
Earlier on Friday, he retweeted a conspiracy theory about Ukraine on the heels of posting a tweet that links to an article naming the alleged whistleblower, who kickstarted the Ukraine-related impeachment inquiry.
The tweet was from Charlie Kirk, the founder of the right-wing group Talking Point USA.
Kirk’s tweet read: ‘This is your daily reminder that: Barack Obama asked Ukraine to investigate his political rival’s campaign manager. 3 Democrat senators asked Ukraine to investigate Trump. And the DNC solicited Ukraine’s help to dig up dirt on Trump.’
‘And the media was silent about it,’ Kirk claimed.
Kirk has sent out identical tweets before, with Politifact labeling it ‘mostly false’ as there’s ‘no evidence’ that Obama asked Ukraine to investigate Paul Manafort, Trump’s former campaign chairman.
President Trump retweeted a conspiracy theory that said President Obama (left) asked Ukraine to investigate Paul Manafort (right)
Trump was already taking heat for retweeting a post from his reelection campaign account that read: ‘It’s pretty simple. The CIA ‘whistleblower’ is not a real whistleblower.’
The post linked to an article from conservative outlet The Washington Examiner, which names the alleged CIA agent who first reported the details of Trump’s now-infamous July 25 phone call with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky.
Trump denies any wrongdoing and says the call was perfect.
Democrats have also steadfastly insisted on keeping the whistleblower’s name a secret in order to protect him.
In contrast, Trump has repeatedly pushed for the person’s identity to be revealed, claiming it will show that they are a partisan operative motivated by left-wing bias.
The whistleblower has been described as a male CIA analyst who was detailed to the White House.
The Washington Post reported he is driven to and from work by armed security officers out of concern for his safety.
Meanwhile, Trump’s tweet comes despite the fact that several of his closest confidantes have tried to dissuade him from pushing for the release of the whistleblower’s name.
According to The Daily Beast, his daughter Ivanka Trump and White House Counsel Pat Cipollone, have warned Trump not to say or post the whistleblower’s name.
However, Trump has repeatedly called upon members of the media to publish the whistleblower’s name.
Several weeks ago he told reporters: ‘You guys ought to release the information.
‘The whistleblower should be revealed because the whistleblower gave false stories. Some people would call it fraud. I won’t go that far but, when I read it closely, I probably would.’