Former US President Donald Trump has asked a US appeals court to revive his lawsuit against Twitter, challenging his permanent suspension from the platform after his supporters attacked the US Capitol on 6 January, 2021.
Lawyers for Mr Trump, a Republican, told the San Francisco-based 9th US Circuit Court of Appeals in a filing that the ban from Twitter marked "overtly partisan censorship" and was "contrary to First Amendment principles deeply rooted in American history and law".
His case seeks compensatory and punitive damages and a court order requiring Twitter to "immediately reinstate" his account that was permanently suspended on 8 January, 2021.
Mr Trump has vowed to keep posting to his own Truth Social media platform. Twitter's new owner, billionaire Elon Musk, has said that he would reinstate Mr Trump's account.
A spokesperson for Mr Trump did not immediately respond to a message seeking comment, and a Twitter spokesperson did not immediately reply.
Twitter said last year it had permanently suspended Mr Trump's account "due to the risk of further incitement of violence" after his supporters stormed the US Capitol as it was preparing to certify Democrat Joe Biden's presidential win.
Pence: Trump's words 'endangered' Americans
Mr Trump's inflammatory words before and during last year's US Capitol insurrection endangered Americans including his own deputy Mike Pence, the former vice president said in a television interview set to air later today.
"The president's words that day at the rally (before the riot) endangered me and my family and everyone at the Capitol," Mr Pence told ABC News.
Mr Pence reportedly is laying the groundwork for a presidential run in 2024. It would pit him against his former boss, who will reportedly announce his own White House bid tomorrow night.
Mr Pence's interview to be broadcast on ABC's "World News Tonight" coincides with the release of his memoir, 'So Help Me God'.
The veteran Republican told the network that Mr Trump, speaking on 6 January, 2021 at a park near the White House, incited the crowd before it marched toward the Capitol.
"The president's words were reckless. It was clear he decided to be part of the problem," Mr Pence said.
He added that he was "angered" when he read a tweet from Mr Trump that day asserting that the vice president "didn't have the courage to do what should have been done" to keep Mr Trump in office by blocking Congress's certification of Joe Biden's 2020 election victory.
"I turned to my daughter, who was standing nearby, and I said, 'It doesn't take courage to break the law. It takes courage to uphold the law,'" Mr Pence told the network.
The vice president was on Capitol Hill at the time, and US Secret Service officers evacuated him from the US Senate chamber where he narrowly avoided an encounter with rioters who had stormed into the complex.
Mr Pence has largely kept silent about his interactions with Mr Trump in the run-up to the 6 January mob attack, until this month.
In an excerpt from his memoir, published last week by the Wall Street Journal, Mr Pence said he spoke with Mr Trump by phone on New Year's Day 2021 and conveyed his refusal to take part in a plan to keep him in power.
"'You're too honest,'" Mr Pence said Mr Trump told him.
"Hundreds of thousands are gonna hate your guts.... People are gonna think you're stupid.'"
Leading up to the 2022 midterm vote, in which Mr Biden's Democrats had been expected to lose handily, Mr Trump made denial of the 2020 election results a key litmus test for candidates to win his influential political endorsement.
But the predicted Republican "red wave" failed to materialise, and Democrats will maintain their control of the Senate. In the still-undecided House, Republicans seem likely to eke out only a razor-thin majority.
The results have emboldened Mr Trump's Republican detractors and sapped most of his political momentum heading into the Tuesday campaign launch.
