clearances of various Trump critics and officials involved in the probe into Russian interference in the 2016 election had been revoked. The announcements were intended to be released to distract from news cycles that were unfavorable to the White House. The morning after publication of the September 5, 2018, New York Times op-ed "I Am Part of the Resistance Inside the Trump Administration", Sanders used her official government Twitter account to tweet that the anonymous writer was a "gutless loser" and to charge that those in the newspaper's opinion department are "the only ones complicit in this deceitful act". Her September 6 tweet gave the telephone number of the newspaper's opinion desk, and two former White House ethics chiefs declared that her tweet had violated federal law in an abuse of power, similar to her June 23, 2018, tweet specifically naming the restaurant that had refused her service in the Red Hen restaurant controversy. In early November, CNN's Jim Acosta engaged in a verbal argument with Trump. While Acosta was asking Trump a question, an intern, at Trump's direction, tried to take away Acosta's microphone. Later in the day, Acosta's White House credentials were suspended, a move that was widely criticized as unprecedented. The next day, to justify the White House's actions, Sanders released a video of the moment the intern tried to grab the microphone from Acosta's hand. The video originated from conspiracy theorist Paul Joseph Watson of the far-right website Infowars, and was allegedly altered to make Acosta seem aggressive and excluded him saying, "Pardon me, ma'am", to the intern. Watson denied that the video was doctored in any way. CNN Communications Executive called Sanders's sharing of the video "shameful" and the White House News Photographers Association said it was "appalled" by her actions, called video manipulation "deceptive, dangerous and unethical", and said that what Sanders did was "equally problematic". During the 2018–2019 federal government shutdown caused by Congress's refusal to fulfill Trump's demand for $5.7 billion in federal funds for a U.S.–Mexico border wall, Sanders argued that the wall was necessary, claiming that the CBP stopped nearly 4,000 known or suspected terrorists when they crossed the Mexico border in 2018. Data obtained by NBC News contradicted Sanders's assertion, showing that from October 1, 2017, to March 31, 2018, only six immigrants on the No Fly List (also known as the terror watch list) were encountered at the