Lin Wood, a defamation lawyer and supporter of President Trump, has been permanently banned from Twitter, a platform he used to promote yesterday’s insurrection and to spread conspiracy theories about the presidential election.
Twitter had placed a temporary suspension on Wood’s account for a tweet that incited violence, but instituted a permanent ban after the 68-year-old attorney publicly said he would begin posting from a second account. Doing so triggered the platform’s rule on “ban evasion,” according to a Twitter spokesperson, leading to Wood’s permanent removal from the platform.
The woman who was shot and killed inside the Capitol as part of the mob retweeted Wood on the day that she died.
A lawyer who represented Atlanta Olympics security guard Richard Jewell and Covington Catholic High School student Nicholas Sandmann, Wood has over the past year become a Trump firebrand, tweeting QAnon delusions and threats against the president’s opponents. His tweets, which garnered thousands of comments, likes, and retweets, advocated for an open revolt against the US government just days ahead of pro-Trump rioters storming the Capitol.
The tweet that triggered the initial suspension came just before a mob flooded the halls of Congress as US lawmakers were certifying the results of the presidential election, which Joe Biden won. In the tweet, Wood said that “the time has come Patriots” and that it was “time to fight for our freedom.” He included an image that had the message “1776 Again,” a reference to the US revolution.
On Wednesday, Wood confirmed to BuzzFeed News that he had been suspended for 12 hours for a “tweet that allegedly incited violence.” On Thursday morning, a Twitter spokesperson said that suspension had been turned into a permanent ban after Wood posted on Parler, a social media platform favored by conservatives, that he would be tweeting from a different account.
“I am now posting on Twitter @FightBackLaw until Jack the Commie lifts my suspension tomorrow,” he wrote on Parler, referring to Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey. Twitter also banned @FightBackLaw.
In a text, Wood said that the tweet he was initially suspended for “was one in which I conveyed my opinion that it was time to fight for our freedom.”
In between fabulist tweets accusing political figures and celebrities of sexually abusing children and casting doubt on the election, Wood has warned about the day he’d be removed from Twitter. On Parler, where he has amassed more than 500,000 followers, his recent messages included one that said that Vice President Mike Pence should be executed by firing squad.
Wood has had an up-and-down relationship with Twitter. He was largely unfamiliar with the platform until late 2018, when he represented British caver Vernon Unsworth in a defamation lawsuit against billionaire Tesla and SpaceX CEO Elon Musk. In the summer of 2018, Musk called Unsworth a “pedo guy” on Twitter, after he criticized the billionaire’s involvement in the rescue of a trapped group of boys in a Thai cave. Unsworth and Wood took Musk to court in late 2019, but came up empty-handed after a jury ruled that the billionaire had not defamed the caver.
