The Twitter logo, as seen on a screen from the floor of the New York Stock Exchange. (Brendan Mcdermid/Reuters)
Twitter has permanently suspended Jacob Wohl, a far-right activist who previously tried to fabricate evidence about special counsel Robert S. Mueller III, for creating fake accounts in an alleged attempt to manipulate the 2020 presidential election.
Twitter confirmed in a statement Tuesday that Wohl’s efforts violated its rules that prohibit users from creating misleading accounts to influence conversations on the site — a policy Twitter has sought to enforce aggressively since Russian agents tried to destabilize U.S. politics on social media during the presidential election four years earlier.
Reached by phone Tuesday evening, Wohl said that one of the accounts attributed to him, @women_4_schultz, was largely an “intellectual exercise.” Wohl, who didn’t dispute having created the account, said it was designed to gauge whether Schultz had much support among liberal women.
Wohl’s suspension came on the same day as a story in USA Today in which Wohl said he planned to create “enormous left-wing online properties” in a bid to steer voters “to what we feel are weaker candidates compared with Trump.”
Twitter’s investigation found Wohl already had created some of those accounts, including @women_4_schultz, which sought to advance the early candidacy of Howard Schultz, according to a source familiar with Twitter’s investigation but not authorized to speak on the record. The former Starbucks chief executive is now considering running for president as an independent.
But Wohl claimed that other accounts allegedly attributed to him were not his creation. Asked to name specific accounts for which that was the case, Wohl said he could not fully recall.
Wohl long has been a controversial figure on Twitter, particularly for his attempts to spread misinformation that claimed that Mueller had sexually assaulted a woman.
He said that he intends to keep busy, including by speaking and consulting, after proving that he can “hijack a news cycle.”
“It’s all fun, man,” he said. “You gotta have fun with this. I had fun with Twitter. They banned me? Oh well — it’s not the end of the world.”
