Tyler Cherry, the recently appointed White House Communications official, apologized for his tweets in the past, including one that compared police officers to “slaves patrols.”

Tyler Cherry was at the center of an online firestorm in the past week after old posts surfaced showing him promoting extremist rhetoric. This happened after he was promoted to Associate Communication Director within the Biden administration. Newsweek reports:

The controversy began shortly after Politico revealed Cherry’s promotion to his former role as Communications Director at the Interior Department. Online, screenshots of tweets from 2014 and 2015 have been circulated. They reveal strong criticisms against law enforcement and calls for the abolishment Immigration and Customs Enforcement.

Cherry allegedly wrote in one of her purported tweets, which was posted in 2015 during the unrest that followed Freddie Gray’s murder while under police custody: “Praying #Baltimore but even more praying for the end of a capitalistic, police-state driven by implicit and explicit racial prejudices.”

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A second post from that same time period stated: “Time to remember that the modern police system is an evolution of slave patrols, and lynch mops.”

Tyler Cherry deleted tweets that predated April 2022, making it impossible to independently verify the screenshots. Cherry, however, seemed to confirm the screenshots were genuine.

“Posts I made on social media when I was younger don’t reflect my current opinions.” Period. “I support the agenda of this Administration and will continue to focus my communications on our climate and environment policies,” he wrote.

Nate Hochman, a writer, claimed that Cherry had deleted all tweets containing the word “white”, just hours after he searched his feed.