Tuesday, October 1, 2019
Mr. Jack Dorsey
Chief Executive Officer
Twitter, Inc.
1355 Market St. Ste. 900
San Francisco, CA 94103
Mr. Dorsey:
I write to call your attention to activity that President Trump has been engaged in on his Twitter account,
which appears to violate the terms of the user agreement that your company requires all users on the
platform adhere to.
Twitter’s user agreement specifically states that users “may not engage in the targeted harassment of
someone, or incite other people to do so,” which includes “violence against an individual or a group of
people.” Furthermore, the agreement states that the platform considers abusive behavior as “an attempt to
harass, intimidate, or silence someone else’s voice,” and that it prohibits “the glorification of violence.”
In recent days, President Trump published the following tweets from his Twitter account to target, harass,
and attempt to out the whistleblower who set forth credible allegations that the President has abused his
power by urging a foreign government to investigate a domestic political rival. He has tweeted:
●

Sept. 27, 2019: “Sounding more and more like the so-called Whistleblower isn’t a Whistleblower
at all. In addition, all second hand information that proved to be so inaccurate that there may not
have even been somebody else, a leaker or spy, feeding it to him or her? A partisan operative?”

●

Sept. 29, 2019: “Like every American, I deserve to meet my accuser, especially when this
accuser, the so-called ‘Whistleblower,’ represented a perfect conversation with a foreign leader in
a totally inaccurate and fraudulent way.”

These tweets should also be placed in the proper context, where the President has compared the
whistleblower to a “spy” who may have committed treason, and further implied that the punishment for
1
that should be death. The dictionary definition of “spy” is “a person employed by one nation to secretly
2
convey classified information of strategic importance to another nation.” This is what the President is
accusing the whistleblower of being.
1
2

​https://www.businessinsider.com/trump-suggests-whistleblower-guilty-of-treason-2019-9
​https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/spy

 Besides targeting the whistleblower, the President has also attempted to target the individual who may
have relayed or provided information to the whistleblower, tweeting:
●

Sept. 29, 2019: ....In addition, I want to meet not only my accuser, who presented SECOND &
THIRD HAND INFORMATION, but also the person who illegally gave this information, which
was largely incorrect, to the “Whistleblower.” Was this person SPYING on the U.S. President?
Big Consequences!

President Trump has also published the following tweets targeting House Intelligence Committee
Chairman Adam Schiff:
●

Sept. 30, 2019: “​Rep. Adam Schiff illegally made up a FAKE & terrible statement, pretended it to
be mine as the most important part of my call to the Ukrainian President, and read it aloud to
Congress and the American people. It bore NO relationship to what I said on the call. Arrest for
Treason?”

●

Sept. 29, 2019: “I want Schiff questioned at the highest level for Fraud & Treason”

Furthermore, President Trump also published the following tweet suggesting that violence could be
incited should Congress issue formal articles of impeachment against him:
●

Sept. 29, 2019: “​....If the Democrats are successful in removing the President from office (which
they will never be), it will cause a Civil War like fracture in this Nation from which our Country
will never heal.”

These are blatant threats. We need a civil society, not a civil war. These tweets represent a clear intent to
baselessly discredit the whistleblower and officials in our government who are following the proper
channels to report allegations of presidential impropriety, all while making blatant threats that put people
at risk and our democracy in danger.
In the past, Twitter has banned or suspended people who have violated its user agreement. ​InfoWars​ host
Alex Jones was permanently banned from the platform in 2018 for spreading disinformation and inciting
violence. Disgraced hedge fund manager Martin Shkreli and actor James Woods were both suspended
from Twitter for using the platform to harass and spread hateful messages. I believe the President’s recent
tweets rise to the level that Twitter should consider suspending his account. Others have had their
accounts suspended for less offensive behavior. And when this kind of abuse is being spewed from the
most powerful office in the United States, the stakes are too high to do nothing.
No user, regardless of their job, wealth, or stature should be exempt from abiding by Twitter’s user
agreement, not even the President of the United States.
Sincerely,

Kamala D. Harris