Prince Harry said Tuesday that he “warned” Jack Dorsey of Twitter’s power to help facilitate a “coup” one day before the Jan. 6 Capitol riot.
“Jack and I were emailing each other prior to January the 6th. I warned him that his platform was allowing a coup to be staged. That email was sent the day before and then it happened and I haven’t heard from him since,” the British royal said during Wired’s RE:WIRED conference.
A representative for Twitter said the company had no comment on the Duke of Sussex’s claim.
Harry did explain why misinformation and its spread are topics so important to him: “I learned from a very early age that the incentives of publishing are not necessarily aligned with the incentives of truth,” he said, noting that the British press “successfully turned fact-based news into opinion-based gossip with devastating consequences.”
He went on, referencing wife Meghan Markle, “I know this story all too well. I lost my mother to this self-manufactured rabidness and, obviously, I’m determined not to lose the mother of my children to the same thing.”
The Capitol riot took place after supporters of then-president Donald Trump breached the Capitol in an effort to overturn the results of the 2020 election by stopping the certification of votes for President Joe Biden. Five people died that day and Trump was banned from Twitter and other major social media platforms in the aftermath. In the lead-up to Jan. 6, he tweeted repeatedly that his followers should travel to Washington, D.C. that day.