Rioters breach the US Capitol during the electoral count; within two days Facebook and Twitter restrict and then suspend Donald Trump's accounts, decisions later reviewed by Meta's Oversight Board.
Trump’s accounts restricted then suspended; Meta’s Oversight Board later faults the open-ended penalty.
The record contains an unresolved disagreement about the death of Capitol Police officer Brian Sicknick: the department’s initial statement attributed it to injuries sustained on duty, while the DC Office of the Chief Medical Examiner concluded in April 2021 that he died of natural causes following two strokes.
U.S. House of Representatives, 117th Congress. Final Report of the Select Committee to Investigate the January 6th Attack on the United States Capitol. (2022). govinfo package GPO-J6-REPORT, dateIssued 22 December 2022, House Report of the 117th Congress, Select Committee to Investigate the January 6th Attack on the United States Capitol — confirmed against govinfo's package summary API, because the /app/details/ page itself is a JavaScript shell and carries no text. The report is served from that package as a 98 MB PDF. Primary congressional record for the sequence of events at the Capitol. Its conclusions were contested by members who did not participate in the Select Committee; this entry attributes its findings to the committee rather than asserting them in the site's own voice.
Meta (Facebook). Our Response to the Violence in Washington. (2021). Facebook's own account, posted 6 January 2021 and updated 7 January, of the 24-hour feature block and the subsequent indefinite extension of the block on Trump's Facebook and Instagram accounts.
Oversight Board. Case Decision 2021-001-FB-FBR: Former President Trump's Suspension. (2021). Decision of 5 May 2021. Upheld the initial restriction but held that the indefinite suspension was an indeterminate and standardless penalty, and required Facebook to reassess within six months. Cited here as a documented disagreement between the company and its own review body.
Twitter, Inc.. Permanent Suspension of @realDonaldTrump. (2021). Twitter's announcement of Friday 8 January 2021. blog.twitter.com returns HTTP 403 to automated requests; the recorded capture was fetched and its payload checked, and it is the real post rather than an interstitial. It quotes the two Tweets at issue, assesses them under the Glorification of Violence policy, and states the account was 'permanently suspended ... due to the risk of further incitement of violence'.
CNN. Officer Sicknick Suffered Strokes and Died of Natural Causes, DC Medical Examiner Says. (2021). A text article, not a video page; the live URL and the recorded capture were both fetched and both carry the full report. Cited for a documented conflict in the record: 'Initially, the Capitol Police said in a statement he died "due to injuries sustained while on-duty"', while the DC chief medical examiner determined in April 2021 that Officer Brian Sicknick suffered strokes and died of natural causes. The article does not date the department's initial statement, so this entry does not either. Both accounts are represented rather than reconciled.
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