Twitter suspended the accounts of Guccifer 2.0 and DC Leaks on Saturday, a day after 12 Russian government officials were indicted on charges of using the accounts to distribute hacked Democratic emails during the 2016 election.
It’s unclear why Twitter — often quick to delete controversial accounts — did not remove the accounts earlier, or if the accused Russian operators actually maintained access as special counsel Robert Mueller’s team investigated the operators.
Twitter said in a statement that “[t]he accounts have been suspended for being connected to a network of accounts previously suspended for operating in violation of our rules.”
It’s unclear if the U.S. government controlled the accounts before their removal. The once-chatty Guccifer 2.0 has not responded to journalist direct messages for more than a year.
The U.S. intelligence community accused Russia of using the accounts in a January 2017 report. Guccifer 2.0‘s final public post on Jan. 12, 2017, directed readers to a WordPress blog post refuting “fake evidence.”
“Unfortunately, I can’t speak to the ownership of the accounts,” Twitter spokesman Brandon Borrman told the Washington Examiner.
The Daily Beast reported in May that U.S. authorities identified a Russian intelligence officer as being behind Guccifer 2.0 after they accidentally logged into an account without using a virtual private network, revealing a Moscow location. It’s unclear if they logged into the Twitter or WordPress accounts.
During the 2016 election, many American journalists communicated with the Guccifer 2.0 account. Sometimes the online persona — claiming to be a Romanian hacker — would volunteer hacked documents. The operator(s) also welcomed journalist requests for information.
Guccifer 2.0 generally emailed documents to journalists after swapping Twitter direct messages. DMs were the most effective means of communication because the persona used various email accounts.
Suspending the accounts means journalists have lost access to communications archives between themselves and the alleged Russian agents.
Often, the Guccifer operators seemed to lack an understanding of what political material was of interest to U.S. journalists, asking for feedback on hacked Democratic records that lacked clear news value. A Vice News linguistic analysis indicated the operator(s) did not actually speak Romanian, as they claimed.
The WordPress blog operated by Guccifer 2.0 has not been deleted.
