He says he deactivated Trump's Twitter — but it was a 'mistake' on ‘a hectic day’
Remember when President Donald Trump’s Twitter account was briefly deactivated earlier this month?
Now we know the person who did it is a man named Bahtiyar Duysak, a German resident working in the United States under a work and study visa, according to TechCrunch.
He also spoke with CNNMoney about what happened, swearing that it was an honest “mistake.”
“It was a hectic day. You have a headache, you are tired,” he said. “We are not machines — this was one of those days.”
According to TechCrunch, Duysak worked as a third-party contractor in the customer support department of Twitter, where he was responsible for looking at reported accounts that might have violated the social media company’s policies and working with others to determine what should be done, if anything.
It was his last day of work when he said someone reported Trump’s account, and “as a final, throwaway gesture, he put the wheels in motion to deactivate it,” TechCrunch wrote. Then, according to TechCrunch, he closed his laptop.
Hours later, Trump’s account was taken down.
Twitter — where Duysak worked as a contractor, according to BuzzFeed News and CNNMoney — quickly explained what happened in a series of tweets.
The social media company said it had “implemented safeguards to prevent this from happening again.”
Earlier today @realdonaldtrump’s account was inadvertently deactivated due to human error by a Twitter employee. The account was down for 11 minutes, and has since been restored. We are continuing to investigate and are taking steps to prevent this from happening again.
— Twitter Government (@TwitterGov) November 3, 2017
Through our investigation we have learned that this was done by a Twitter customer support employee who did this on the employee’s last day. We are conducting a full internal review. https://t.co/mlarOgiaRF
— Twitter Government (@TwitterGov) November 3, 2017
Update: We have implemented safeguards to prevent this from happening again. We won’t be able to share all details about our internal investigation or updates to our security measures, but we take this seriously and our teams are on it. https://t.co/8EfEzHvB7p
— Twitter Government (@TwitterGov) November 3, 2017
And Trump, too, took to Twitter to share his own thoughts about his account being temporarily deactivated.
My Twitter account was taken down for 11 minutes by a rogue employee. I guess the word must finally be getting out-and having an impact.
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) November 3, 2017
Duysak told CNNMoney he learned that Trump’s Twitter account was taken down after he saw news reports about it. But he added that he has nothing against Trump — and that it was just pure coincidence he was responsible for briefly taking down his account on his last day of work before heading back to Germany.
“Such a little probability,” he told CNNMoney. “Sometimes these things happen.”
An unnamed friend of Duysak told Buzzfeed that the former Twitter contractor didn’t have any apparent interest in politics.
“The last time I spoke with Bahtiyar six months ago over WhatsApp, he seemed like he was planning to go back to Europe,” the friend said. “I cannot believe he had access to deactivate the most important account in the world.”
Buzzfeed reported that a spokesperson for the Secret Service said there isn’t currently an investigation into Duysak, who was employed at Twitter with Pro Unlimited, a contracting service.
Duysak stands by his statement that he did nothing illegal.
“I didn’t do any crime or anything evil, but I feel like Pablo Escobar,” he told TechCrunch, “and slowly it’s getting really annoying.”
He also told CNNMoney that, even if he deactivated Trump’s account on purpose, “it still shouldn’t have taken place … because of internal regulations at the company.”
“I apologize to everyone who I’ve hurt,” he said. “At the same time, I’m not a rogue person ... I’ve worked for so many companies. Everyone will agree I’m reliable and trustworthy. There are little probabilities that occur and you’re in the spotlight.”
This story was originally published November 30, 2017 at 9:57 AM with the headline "He says he deactivated Trump's Twitter — but it was a 'mistake' on ‘a hectic day’."