Twitter will automatically transfer the official @POTUS presidential handle to President-elect Joe Biden on Inauguration Day, even if President Donald Trump refuses to concede the election. Other official accounts like @whitehouse, @VP and @FLOTUS will also transfer to the new administration.

"Twitter is actively preparing to support the transition of White House institutional Twitter accounts on January 20th, 2021. As we did for the presidential transition in 2017, this process is being done in close consultation with the National Archives and Records Administration," a spokesperson for Twitter told CBS News.

As with the previous transfer of Twitter handles from President Barack Obama to Mr. Trump, existing tweets on those accounts will be archived and the accounts will be reset to zero tweets for the incoming administration on Inauguration Day.

Mr. Trump has refused to concede the election, even though Mr. Biden definitively won the Electoral College and the popular vote and several states have already certified their results. The General Services Administration, which is responsible for overseeing the presidential transition, also has yet to release a letter of "ascertainment" affirming that Mr. Biden won, which kickstarts the formal process. 

Nonetheless, the move by Twitter indicates that Mr. Trump's challenges to the election results are not taken seriously by the company.

Although Mr. Trump will soon lose access to the @POTUS handle, he has primarily relied on his personal account, @realDonaldTrump, to communicate throughout his presidency. However, once Mr. Trump is no longer in office, his private account will lose protections under Twitter's "world leaders" policy, which allows rule-breaking tweets to remain up with warning labels. Twitter has labeled several of Mr. Trump's tweets in the weeks since Election Day for containing false information about the election.

First published on November 21, 2020 / 9:30 AM

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