The post EXCLUSIVE: Facebook Permanently Bans Reporter Retweeted By Trump In Mass Purge Of Conservative Accounts appeared first on National File. Visit NationalFile.com for more hard-hitting investigative journalism.
Facebook has permanently banned Big League Politics reporter Shane Trejo from the platform after announcing a mass purge of pro-Trump Twitter accounts.
“It said ‘Your Account Has Been Disabled’,” Trejo wrote in an exclusive statement to the National File after he discovered he had been banned from the platform. “No reason.”
Trejo added that he had submitted an appeal to the decision.
Facebook released a statement on Wednesday announcing that it was mass-removing pages tied to QAnon, militia groups, and violent anarchists such as Antifa.
Trejo, however, was not a member of a militia group, and had previously criticized QAnon on social media. However, he did recently publish an article that was critical of outgoing Rep. Denver Riggleman (R-VA) for heaping praise on a rant by CNN’s Jake Tapper against the QAnon movement. Even in that article, however, there was no expression of support for QAnon itself.
President Trump retweeted one of Trejo’s articles in January, according to a report by Politico:
“Mitt Romney is tied to Hunter Biden’s Burisma corruption. This is why he’s bent over backwards for the media with this show ‘guilty’ vote,” read a Trump retweet of the website Big League Politics’ post. “He doesn’t want this story EXPOSED!”
Facebook claimed that it removed 520 pages, 980 groups and 160 ads that were “for militia organizations and those encouraging riots, including some who may identify as Antifa”. They did not specify what proportion of these accounts were Antifa and what proportion were militia members.
In addition, Facebook stated that 790 groups, 100 pages and 1,500 ads associated with QAnon had been removed from the platform. QAnon is a movement that posits a deep state plot against President Trump. Followers of QAnon interpret cryptic posts by a 8chan poster known as “Q”, who has claimed to be a high ranking official within the Trump administration.
President Trump addressed QAnon during a press conference earlier today. The Hill reports:
“I don’t know much about the movement other than I understand they like me very much, which I appreciate. But I don’t know much about the movement,” he said at a press briefing.
…
“I’ve heard these are people that love our country and they just don’t like seeing it. I don’t know really anything about it other than they do supposedly like me. And they also would like to see problems in these areas … go away.”
Regardless of the facts surrounding QAnon, the disabling of Trejo’s Facebook account appears to be the latest in a line of politically motivated bans of leading Trump allies.
The post EXCLUSIVE: Facebook Permanently Bans Reporter Retweeted By Trump In Mass Purge Of Conservative Accounts appeared first on National File. Visit NationalFile.com for more hard-hitting investigative journalism.