Pfizer/White House Files:

But the crucial “fifth strike” and permanent censoring of my account caught them by surprise – because a Twitter lobbyist who was the company’s closest White House contact pushed it through in hours. The lobbyist, Todd O’Boyle, acted outside Twitter’s normal safeguards for actions against large accounts like mine. Instead, O’Boyle repeatedly pressured a junior Twitter employee to ban me on a Saturday evening in late August, when few employees were working.

“Hi all – did we perm suspend Alex berenson?” Gadde wrote an hour after my ban to a senior manager in “site integrity” unit, which was usually responsible for enforcement actions on accounts like mine. “Typically these are flagged to me first? Did I miss something[?]”

O’Boyle’s sudden move to ban me caught not just Gadde but the site integrity unit by surprise, the emails show. The manager responded, “this was not an action taken by SI [site integrity]. We’re investigating what happened.”