Twitter appeared to temporarily suspend and reinstate the congressional account of Republican Representative George Santos on multiple occasions, leading to confusion over the status of the embattled freshman’s social media account.
NBC News congressional reporter Kate Santaliz noted that Mr Santos’ account was suspended on three times on Friday alone. Veteran Capitol Hill reporter Jamie Dupree reported that Mr Santos’s Twitter account seemed to have been suspended and restored multiple times. New York Times reporter Michael Gold also posted a screen shot of the account being suspended.
The Independent has reached out to Mr Santos’s office and Twitter for comment.
As of Friday afternoon, both Mr Santos’s campaign account and his congressional accounts were still active.
The confusion comes as Mr Santos faces a series of criticisms that he exaggerated or outright lied about important details of his resume.
This week, Patch.com reported that Mr Santos allegedly took money from a GoFundMe meant to pay for the surgery of a service for military and said he used it to pay for surgery “for other dogs.” Mr Santos vehemently denied that he did such a thing, though mistakenly tweeted a typo that he had “reduced” dogs instead of “rescued” dogs through his charity Friends of Pets, of which the IRS says it has no record, The New York Times reported.
At the same time, Republican leadership seems uninterested in punishing Mr Santos. This week, the House GOP Steering Committee assigned him to the House Science, Space and Technology Committee and the House Small Business Committee.
Representative Bill Foster of Illinois, a Democrat and a physicist by training, mocked Mr Santos in a series of tweets.
“As the only recipient of the Wilson Prize for High-Energy Particle Accelerator Physics serving in Congress, it can get lonely. Not anymore,” he tweeted. “I'm thrilled to be joined on the Science Committee by my Republican colleague Dr. George Santos, winner of not only the Nobel Prize, but also the Fields Medal - the top prize in Mathematics - for his groundbreaking work with imaginary numbers.”
