Twitter Blames 'Outage' For Temporary Block Of Trump Whistleblower Tweet

Twitter Inc TWTR said an outage in one of its systems temporarily blocked a tweet from President Donald Trump over the weekend, according to Reuters.

Twitter Says Some Account Profiles Affected

Trump retweeted an account that identified the alleged whistleblower whose complaint eventually led to Trump's impeachment by the House of Representatives. 

The retweet from Trump's personal account was not visible to his followers from Saturday morning through Sunday afternoon, Reuters said. The original account that shared the alleged whistleblower's name was deleted.

Twitter Support blamed an outage for hiccups that affected a number of user accounts, including Trump's. 

"Due to an outage with one of our systems, tweets on account profiles were visible to some, but not others," said Twitter Support said. "We're still working on fixing this and apologize for any confusion."

Whistleblower's Lawyer Says ID Could 'Jeopardize Their Safety'

Trump faced criticism from Democrats, some Republicans and members of the U.S. intelligence community all of whom strongly objected to Trump's effort to reveal the identity of the whistleblower.

One of the whistleblower's lawyers, Mark Zaid, tweeted in November that Republicans had "sought to expose our client's identity, which could jeopardize their safety, as well as that of their family."

What's Next

As per Twitter's policy, sharing private information about an individual, including the alleged whistleblower, would be a violation of its rules.

Names, however are not considered private information, a Twitter spokeswoman told Reuters.