Twitter on Thursday permanently suspended the account belonging to Project Veritas, a right-wing investigative news site, according to The New York Times and Politico.
In a statement to both the Times and Politico, Twitter confirmed that the account had been removed from the site, saying that the it had been “permanently suspended for repeated violations of Twitter’s private information policy.”
Twitter declined to specify which tweets led to the ban.
In addition, Twitter temporarily suspended the account of the organization’s founder, James O’Keefe, saying he had violated the site’s policies on sharing personal information. O’Keefe will reportedly need to delete the offending tweet before his account will be un-frozen.
In a statement to Politico, O’Keefe denied that his tweet violated Twitter’s policy and claimed Twitter’s ban of the Project Veritas account was “an apparent act of retaliation for daring to question their authority.”
O'Keefe, a conservative political activist, founded Project Veritas in 2010 and has broken several stories in recent years that allege liberal bias in mainstream news organizations.
However, the group has been criticized for being deceptive in their reporting — reporters often act undercover and fail to identify themselves to their subjects, the organization has been accused of using deceptively edited video and has peddled in conspiracy theories in the past.
The move comes after Twitter announced earlier this year to crack down on the spread of misinformation on its site following the rise of the QAnon conspiracy and the events of Jan. 6 at the U.S. Capitol.