Meta restores Donald Trump’s access to Facebook and Instagram

Donald Trump’s Facebook and Instagram pages have been reactivated after a two-year suspension. See what it means.

Former US President Donald Trump’s access to Facebook and Instagram has been restored, two years after he was suspended following the deadly Capitol Hill riot.

Meta in January said it would lift Mr Trump’s suspension “in the coming weeks” and would institute heightened penalties of a suspension between one month and two years if the former president violated its content policies again.

This means Mr Trump again has access to key platforms for voter outreach and political fundraising ahead of another run for the White House in 2024.

He had 23 million followers on Instagram and 34 million on Facebook as of January.

Donald Trump’s Facebook and Instagram pages are back. Picture: AFP

It comes as former Twitter executives have admitted it was a mistake to censor a bombshell scoop about Joe Biden’s son’s business dealings during the 2020 presidential election campaign.

But they have told a US congressional probe into the scandal that the call to block the New York Post’s story and temporarily lock the newspaper’s Twitter account was not driven by any request from the government, intelligence agencies or political actors.

The new inquiry is led by House Republicans including committee chairman James Comer, who has accused the President’s son Hunter of using his father’s political influence to pursue business deals overseas.

The New York Post, published by News Corp, revealed in 2020 that Hunter introduced his father to an executive at a Ukrainian energy firm before the then-vice president pressured Ukraine government officials to fire a prosecutor who was investigating the company.

President Joe Biden alongside his son Hunter. Picture: AFP

The scoop was based on emails recovered from Mr Biden’s son’s laptop – who left it at a repair shop and never collected it – that also contained sexually explicit images and videos of him taking drugs.

Prior to the election campaign, the FBI had warned Twitter of a potential “hack-and-leak operation” targeting Hunter Biden, before the social media giant censored The New York Post’s scoop in October.

At the hearing on Thursday (AEDT), Twitter’s former global head of trust and safety Yoel Roth said: “In that moment, with limited information, Twitter made a mistake.”

Mr Comer said the US had witnessed “Big Tech autocrats wield their unchecked power to suppress the speech of Americans to promote their preferred political opinions”.

A photo of Hunter Biden from his now-infamous laptop.

But Twitter’s ex-deputy general counsel Jim Baker – previously a top FBI lawyer – said he was “aware of no unlawful collusion with, or direction from, any government agency or political campaign on how Twitter should have handled the Hunter Biden laptop situation”.

White House spokesman Ian Sams argued the lengthy hearing was a “bizarre political stunt”.

“This appears to be the latest effort by the House Republican majority’s most extreme MAGA members to question and re-litigate the outcome of the 2020 election,” he said.

In a twist, another ex-Twitter staffer, Anika Collier Navaroli, told the hearing that Donald Trump’s staff once demanded Twitter take down a post from the wife of musician John Legend that insulted the then president.

Chrissy Teigen and John Legend. Picture: AFP

In 2019, the then-president heckled the “boring” Legend and his “filthy-mouthed” wife Chrissy Teigen on Twitter, who responded by calling him a “p**** a** b****”.

Ms Navaroli said the White House almost immediately asked for it to be deleted.

“They wanted it to come down because it was a derogatory statement directed towards the president,” she said.

But the tweet was allowed to remain online because Ms Navaroli said Twitter’s policy at the time allowed up to three insults in a single post.

Teigen later shared a clip of the exchange at the congressional hearing, saying: “Oh my god.”

Originally published as Meta restores Donald Trump’s access to Facebook and Instagram