The Obama administration’s Justice Department on Tuesday banned one of its officials from Twitter after the official mocked CNN in a tweet that called the network “petty” for writing about claims that Melania Trump’s convention speech stole from a 2008 speech by Michelle Obama.
Justice released a statement about the incident Tuesday afternoon, but refused to name the official who tweeted. The department also refused to explain why the official would not be named.
Just before 7 a.m., the department’s official Twitter account posted a link to the story about plagiarism charges against Melania Trump, accompanied by the message, “CNN is the biggest troll of them all lmao.” It ended with the hashtag “petty.”
Justice quickly took down the tweet, but it was captured by the Independent Journal Review and others.
After a few hours, the department released the following statement:
“A staffer in the public affairs office erroneously used the official Department of Justice Twitter handle to post a tweet that was intended for a personal account. The tweet does not represent the Department’s views and was inappropriate for the Department of Justice’s official account, so it was immediately deleted.”
“The staffer’s access to the Department’s social media accounts has been revoked. As a result of this incident, the Office of Public Affairs has implemented procedural changes to the way we use our social media accounts and will provide additional social media training for employees.”
“The Justice Department takes this matter very seriously and will continue to take the appropriate steps to prevent it from happening in the future.”
