Spicer Denies White House Ordered Deletion Of Nat’l Park’s Climate Tweets

White House spokesman Sean Spicer denied Wednesday that the Trump administration had anything to do with the deletion of tweets about climate change from a National Parks Service account, saying that the tweets had been deleted because of a breach in social media policy.

When asked specifically about the tweets from the Badlands National Park account, which went viral Tuesday before being deleted, Spicer lumped them into the issue with the main NPS account, which had reportedly been banned from tweeting over the weekend because it retweeted unflattering tweets about Donald Trump’s inauguration crowds.

Spicer denied that was the case. Instead, he blamed the retweets from the NPS on an “unauthorized user.” That’s the same explanation an NPS official gave for the apparently rogue tweets from the Badlands account: that they were sent out by an ex-employee.

“No, there’s nothing that’s come from the White House, absolutely not,” Spicer said. “I think in some cases I know in the Parks Service, for example, over the weekend somebody who an unauthorized user had an old password in the San Francisco office went in and started retweeting inappropriate things that were in violation of their policy.”

Spicer also took a dig at the Environmental Protection Agency, pointing out that it had violated the Antideficiency Act and anti-lobbying bans during the Obama administration by promoting the former President’s policies.

“I know this happened in the EPA is another example, I think, of social media contact,” he said. “The EPA actually violated the Antideficiency Act and anti-lobbying bans a year ago during the Obama administration, and inappropriately were marketing some policies of President Obama and I think there is a couple of agencies that have had problems adhering to their own policies, and I would refer you back to them as to why those things are happening.”