The rogue Twitter employee who briefly deactivated President Trump’s account has finally revealed himself.
Bahtiyar Duysak, of Germany, had been working for the social media giant as a contractor when he decided to do away with the @realDonaldTrump handle, according to TechCrunch.
Speaking to the website in an interview published Wednesday, the Cal State Hayward grad described how, on his very last day with the company, he accidentally banned the commander-in-chief — calling the whole thing “a mistake.”
He said he had been tired and running on fumes, which caused him to basically not care anymore.
“I didn’t hack anyone. I didn’t do anything that I was not authorized to do,” Duysak explained. “I didn’t go to any site I was not supposed to go to … I didn’t do any crime or anything evil, but I feel like Pablo Escobar.”
Duysak, who worked for a contracting company called Pro Unlimited, told TechCrunch that when he made the decision to deactivate Trump’s account Nov. 2, he never actually thought it would be removed.
The reason he believed this was because, according to Twitter, the @POTUS and @realDonaldTrump handles cannot be banned because the tweets are considered to be “newsworthy” and in the public’s interest.
On his last day, Duysak — who was born in Turkey — recalled how someone reported Trump’s account, so as a parting shot, he chose to deactivate it.
“I was tired,” he said, noting how he was at Twitter headquarters in San Francisco.
“I didn’t do anything on purpose.”
Trump’s account was down for a total of 11 minutes that day, prompting countless tweets from users. Twitter told TechCrunch that it has made numerous internal changes so that a similar situation doesn’t happen in the future.
“We have implemented safeguards to prevent this from happening again,” the company said. “We won’t be able to share all details about our internal investigation or updates to our security measures, but we take this seriously and our teams are on it.”
Duysak says he ultimately hopes that people will forget about the Trump incident and move on.
“I want to continue an ordinary life,” he said. “I had to delete hundreds of friends, so many pictures, because reporters are stalking me. I just want to continue an ordinary life.”
Duysak added, “It was definitely a mistake and I apologize if I hurt anyone.”