Alderman Gardiner banned from Twitter

UPDATE: As of September 11, 2020 Gardiner remains banned.

On June 11, 2020 Gardiner somehow managed to get both his official account @AldJimGardiner suspended and his political account @JimGardiner45th outright banned. Twitter cited a violation of their Twitter Rules. It’s not easy to get banned, a dishonor typically reserved for vocal white supremacists like Milo Yiannopoulos. When asked about it by Shia Kapos, Gardiner claimed to not know anything about it, claiming he doesn’t run the social media account. Two sources have confirmed that this is a lie, he does in fact run the social media accounts - or what is left of them.

His Twitter history in a nutshell is:

• On January 18, 2020 Gardiner deleted his original official Twitter handle @AldGardiner, seemingly in response to constituents calling him out and the Chicago Board of Ethics weighing in.

• Sometime in March 2020, @AldGardiner was taken over as a parody account.

• On May 20 Gardiner created a new official account, @AldJimGardiner.

• Less than a month later, on June 11 @AldJimGardiner was suspended and his political account @JimGardiner45th, which he’d had since the Alderman campaign, was banned entirely.

• Because @JimGardiner45th was banned, it was an open handle again. The operator of @AldGardiner later tweeted that they had hijacked the @JimGardiner45th handle as well, which Twitter subsequently permanently suspended for impersonation.