Barstool Sports founder David Portnoy says he was suspended from Twitter for 12 hours earlier this week after posting an email response from Business Insider editor-in-chief Nicholas Carlson.
Business Insider recently published an article where several women accuse Portnoy of sexual misconduct, allegations Portnoy has denied. The Washington Examiner reported that Portnoy posted an Instagram story on Monday saying he had been temporarily suspended from Twitter for 12 hours after he posted a screenshot of Carlson’s response to Portnoy’s request for him to discuss Business Insider’s article on his podcast.
“I got suspended from posting on Twitter for 12 hours for posting this,” Portnoy wrote in the post, which included the screenshot.
Portnoy included his invitation to Carlson, which asked him to come on Portnoy’s podcast to discuss the article.
“We’ll make it as fair as possible and you can bring as many people as possible as you’d like,” Portnoy said in the invitation. “You can video/record the whole conversation and repost for your own purposes.”
Carlson responded by thanking Portnoy for the invitation but saying that he would decline and “let the story speak for itself.” He then directed Portnoy to another employee for “future invitations or requests for comment.”
Portnoy’s suspension has been lifted and the tweet still appears on the website.
As The Daily Wire reported, Portnoy went on Fox News Monday night to himself and say that “it’s guilty until proven innocent” in America these days.
“They won’t even discuss it. They print and run. They print and run. It’s disgusting and it’s character assassination,” Portnoy said. “My lawyers have said just let it go, it’ll go away. I’m not going to let it go because this is, this behavior, I’ve never been attacked like this. I’ve been attacked for two decades, but never escalated to this length and, frankly, it’s scary. I didn’t know that you could do this.”
One woman claimed Portnoy flew her to his house but when they had sex she felt like “a human sex doll.” She later texted a friend saying Portnoy was rough. She said she screamed for Portnoy to stop.
From The Daily Wire:
In a video posted to Twitter on Thursday, Portnoy said that her version of events was “not true.” Portnoy was able to identify the girl because she said she slept on the couch for the rest of her visit. That was one of the few details about her story that Portnoy said was accurate.
“I can say this unequivocally, she came, she flew, we did have pizza, hung out, hooked up. At no point during it, at no point was it not 100% consensual. At no point did she ask me to stop. At no point did either of us think something unseemly happened. There was no weirdness after. It was totally fine, normal interaction. Sexual, 100% consensual,” Portnoy said.
As for the second accuser, Portnoy denied her allegations and produced messages from the girl he believed to be the accuser, which showed she asked to meet up with him again.
“But I can’t stop a he said, she said so, yeah, it’s f***ing scary and it sucks and it’s sad that that’s the world we live in. This isn’t a court of law until it’s innocent until proven guilty,” Portnoy said. “No charges ever have been filed, probably won’t unless I’m provoking right now, but there’s no way to do it because I’ve never done anything. But with media and Business Insider, which doesn’t give a f*** about destroying lives, or who they’re affecting right now, or their reputation. It’s guilty until proven innocent.”
“It’s actually f***ing scary because people can basically say whatever they want and, like, this is going to be the new narrative, ‘Dave Portnoy is a rapist.’ It is 100% false. There is not an ounce of credibility to it,” Portnoy added.