President Donald Trump's children and aides could potentially face suspension from Twitter if they use their accounts to circumvent his ban on the social media platform.
Trump was given a permanent suspension from Twitter following the riot at the Capitol that left five people dead as Congress met to finalize the results of the 2020 presidential election.
Twitter said the president's posts could pose "the risk of further incitement of violence." Trump has since communicated through official White House communications and speeches.
Trump's adult children and many of his closest aides still have active Twitter accounts. However, so far they appear to have been careful not to share messages from the outgoing president that could be interpreted as an attempt to circumvent his suspension.
"If we have a reason to believe he's using other accounts for the purposes of evading the suspension, the accounts could face permanent suspension under our ban evasion policy," a Twitter spokesperson told Newsweek on Thursday.
That policy is publicly available and was last updated in October 2020, according to Twitter. It is clear about attempts by other account holders to get around a suspension.
"If an account has been permanently suspended for severe violations of the Twitter Rules, Twitter reserves the right to also permanently suspend any other account we believe the same account holder or entity may be operating in violation of our earlier suspension, regardless of when the other account was created," the policy says.
"You can't circumvent a Twitter suspension by operating, or having someone else operate on your behalf, an account which represents your identity, persona, brand or business persona for a different purpose."
Trump initially tried to get around his suspension by tweeting from the official @POTUS account, but his tweets were quickly deleted. Twitter's policy is to delete tweets that violate its rules but not suspend government accounts. From January 20, government Twitter accounts will be controlled by the Biden administration. This would leave Trump with his family's accounts and those of his remaining aides.
The president's eldest son, Donald Trump Jr., has 6.5 million followers, Eric Trump has 4.2 million and Ivanka Trump has 10.2 million. These numbers are far short of the 88 million followers the president's account had before its suspension.
Eric Trump shared a press release from the president on Wednesday but this was also sent out through official channels. He appears to be the only one of the three who's shared a message from his father in recent days.
White House Deputy Chief of Staff for Communications Dan Scavino tweeted a statement from Trump on January 7—before his suspension—acknowledging the results of the election. Scavino has not tweeted since.
Any account that tries to circumvent the ban will face possible suspension and Twitter has acted against multiple pro-Trump accounts since January 6 that have violated their terms of service.
