It’s been a terrible, horrible, no good, very bad 72 hours for right-wing troll and pseudojournalist Charles C. Johnson. After word got out that Johnson was asking for help in “taking out” civil rights activist Deray McKesson, Twitter suspended his main account on Sunday morning. Yesterday, Twitter went further and banned Johnson’s account altogether–after also nuking two attempted replacement accounts. But Johnson isn’t taking this lying down. On Monday, he had his lawyers send an ultimatum to Twitter–reinstate his accounts immediately or Johnson will sue.
Pando Daily obtained a copy of the demand letter Johnson’s lawyers sent to Twitter. Read it here.
Johnson’s lead attorney, John Burns, writes that Twitter has “groundlessly” suspended Johnson’s accounts four previous times, resulting in “economic damages for my client.” He also warns that if Johnson does indeed sue, “we will be very curious to see how even handed your suspension approach really is.”
To anyone who knows Johnson and how he operates, this argument is so frivolous that it’s almost comical. Recall that Johnson was kicked off Twitter four times last fall. First, he posted the address of someone who had been exposed to Ebola in Dallas. Then he publicly asked for help in finding the boyfriend of a Dallas nurse who had been exposed to Ebola. Finally, he tried to out “Jackie,” the University of Virginia student who claimed to have been violently gang-raped in 2012. All of these instances were clear violations of Twitter’s policies against publishing private and confidential information.
Given that Twitter has been under fire for not doing enough to curb cyberbullying and threats, there is no way that Twitter could not have suspended Johnson for this. Indeed, I’m surprised that Twitter allowed him to return after he tried to out Jackie, considering that he openly admitted to criminal harassment and stalking, and possibly extortion and reckless endangerment. And now he cries foul when he uses terminology that any reasonable person would construe as a threat. Johnson says that he only wanted to dox McKesson. But if that’s the case, he has tacitly admitted that he is too lazy to find a less intimidating phrase.
It’s well established that private companies have fairly broad latitude to set reasonable guidelines for the use of their services and to enforce them. Given Johnson’s actions, Twitter was well within its rights to tell Johnson, “You can post this stuff–just find somewhere else to do it.” Indeed, Twitter could have potentially been in astronomical legal danger had it not suspended Johnson and any harm had befallen those two Ebola victims and Jackie.
If I’m reading this letter right, Johnson is trying to argue that Twitter has the same obligation as federal and state governments to respect his right to free speech. But even if you buy that argument, the strongest protection of free speech under the First Amendment–which, remember, is binding on the states via the 14th Amendment–would not protect someone who strays into egregiously harassing and threatening behavior, as Johnson has all too often.
I have to wonder where Johnson goes shopping, because I don’t think there’s a store in his hometown of Fresno where you can buy cojones big enough to sue for this. It’s obvious he has no case. Twitter hasn’t even responded to this claim as of yet–probably because its legal team in San Francisco is laughing too hard to do so. If Johnson does follow through on his threat to sue Twitter, the velocity with which it is likely to be thrown out ought to create quite the breeze. I also have to hope Johnson has a lot of money saved up, because he could be on the hook for Twitter’s legal fees. Considering that the Twitter feed for his Got News site has also been suspended and the site has been inaccessible for most of Monday, if I were Johnson, I’d cut my losses and find somewhere else to troll.
