President Donald Trump did not actually delete a retweet identifying somebody thought to be the White House whistleblower.
The whistleblower has been largely irrelevant since Trump, acting White House chief of staff Mick Mulvaney and defense attorney Rudy Giuliani all substantiated the initial complaint.
Despite that, the identity of the whistleblower has been a fixation for Trump and some of his most die-hard supporters. Many have argued the outing is witness intimidation -- the whistleblower already requires armed guards.
CNN chief media correspondent Brian Stelter investigated Trump's tweet.
"Earlier today I said Trump had RTed, then removed, a post with the unsubstantiated name of the Ukraine whistleblower. Tonight, Twitter said that Trump never un-RTed the post. A Twitter glitch made it LOOK like he had removed it. I've updated my story w/ the new info," Stelter reported.
"It appeared, for most of the day, that Trump had removed the controversial retweet. Virtually his entire Friday night tweetstorm appeared to be missing from his timeline, when users checked in different browsers, on different devices, from different accounts," he explained.
"On Saturday night Twitter said a software bug caused the blackout. A Twitter spokesman confirmed that Trump's account, plus millions of other accounts, were affected by the bug. Bottom line: Trump's retweet containing the purported name is still visible all around the world," he added.
