Twitter 'actively working' to support transition of White House accounts to Biden admin on Inauguration Day

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Twitter is "actively working" with the U.S. government to support the transition of accounts from the Trump administration to the Biden administration, Fox News has learned, which will take place Wednesday after President-elect Joe Biden is sworn in as 46th president of the United States.

"As President-elect Biden is sworn in tomorrow, Twitter will facilitate the transfer of institutional White House Twitter accounts, such as @WhiteHouse, @POTUS, @VP, @FLOTUS, and @PressSec," a Twitter spokesperson told Fox News.

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The spokesperson told Fox News that Twitter, as they did in 2017 during President Trump’s inauguration, is working to "support the archival and transition of Twitter accounts across administrations."

The spokesperson said Twitter will transfer current accounts to the National Archives and Records Administration, where the tweets and account history "will remain publicly available and the account usernames will be updated to reflect their archived status."

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President Trump’s official administration account, @POTUS, will be public archived as @POTUS45, just as former President Obama’s account was archived as @POTUS44, Twitter said.

Earlier this month, following the Capitol riot, Twitter moved to permanently suspend President Trump from his @realDonaldTrump account.

"After a close review of recent Tweets from the @realDonaldTrump account and the context around them – specifically how they are being received and interpreted on and off Twitter – we have permanently suspended the account due to the risk of further incitement of violence," Twitter said.

Later, when the president shared three messages from the official @POTUS handle, Twitter quickly took them down. He sent the same text out in a statement to White House reporters, criticizing Twitter as an opponent of free speech and teasing a potential new conservative social media platform in the future.

The official account had, until that point, not shared any tweets since late December. It will be transferred to President-elect Joe Biden after Inauguration Day and remains active.

Twitter also noted that with the swearing-in of President-elect Joe Biden and Vice President-elect Kamala Harris will come the @FLOTUS account for incoming first lady Jill Biden, and a new handle "@SecondGentleman" for Harris’ husband, Douglas Emhoff.

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Meanwhile, Twitter pointed to "multiple challenging circumstances" surrounding Biden’s inauguration – like the novel coronavirus pandemic and the aftermath of the Jan. 6 Capitol riot – and said their platform "will serve as both a venue for people to watch and talk about this political event."

Twitter also noted that following the Capitol riot, the platform is taking additional steps to "protect the public conversation" from attempts to "incite violence, organize attacks and share deliberately misleading information about the election outcome."

"These efforts, including our open lines of communication with law enforcement, will continue through the inauguration and will adapt as needed if circumstances change in real-time," Twitter said.