Donald Trump Jr returned to X, the platform formerly known as Twitter, after his account was hacked, only to blame Hunter Biden for the incident.
“I’M BACK... Hunter Biden must have hacked my account!!!” Mr Trump Jr tweeted on Friday morning.
This comes after his account appeared to have been taken over on Wednesday morning as it falsely announced the death of former President Donald Trump and said Mr Trump Jr would be running for president in 2024 instead.
“I’m sad to announce, my father Donald Trump has passed away. I will be running for president in 2024,” the account posted to immediate assumptions from other users that the ex-president’s oldest son had had his account hacked.
The account of Mr Trump Jr also wrote: “Some interesting messages with Jeffrey Epstein...”
Epstein, the disgraced financier and convicted sex offender, died by suicide in a Manhattan jail cell in 2019 as he awaited trial for sex crimes.
“This just in: North Korea is about to get smoked,” the account also posted on Wednesday morning.
The account also shared profanity-laden messages targeting President Joe Biden and social media influencer and WWE wrestler Logan Paul.
The tweets started to become unavailable at around 9am on Wednesday.
The account of Mr Trump Jr’s younger brother, Eric Trump, tweeted: “I don’t want @DonaldJTrumpJr to get his account back – this is all too entertaining.”
“What was @donaldtrumpjr password? Don2024?” he added.
There were plenty of reactions to Mr Trump Jr’s supposed announcement of his father’s death, with TV host Piers Morgan writing, “This is *probably* fake news”.
Mr Trump Jr later commented on Instagram: “Listen, if anyone can get me the name of the number of the hacker it’s probably time for me to hire my own social media guy. Lol.”
Far-right commentator Jack Posobiec said he was “still voting for Zombie Trump”.
The seemingly hacked account of Mr Trump Jr also wrote, “Richard Heart is innocent, when I become president, I am going to burn the SEC”.
The Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) claimed that the cryptocurrency influencer Richard Heart defrauded millions of dollars from investors via the unlawful sale of unregistered crypto asset securities, CBS reported early last month.
Mr Heart, a YouTuber, embezzled at least $12m of investor funds, a lawsuit filed by the SEC on 31 July states.
On that day, the SEC tweeted: “Today we charged Richard Heart (aka Richard Schueler) and three unincorporated entities that he controls, Hex, PulseChain, and PulseX, with conducting unregistered offerings of crypto asset securities that raised more than $1 billion in crypto assets from investors.”
The Director of the Fort Worth Regional Office, Eric Werner, said in a statement at the time that “Heart called on investors to buy crypto asset securities in offerings that he failed to register. He then defrauded those investors by spending some of their crypto assets on exorbitant luxury goods. This action seeks to protect the investing public and hold Heart accountable for his actions”.
“Yikes… hacked by a crypto-kid living in his mom’s basement. Not a good look! Shoulda had that [two-factor authentication] turned on,” Michael Rae Khoury wrote in reaction to the tweets from the account of Mr Trump Jr.
