Trump administration comments were at odds with reports that EPA employees were banned from tweeting, issuing press releases or speaking with reporters

White House press secretary Sean Spicer on Wednesday added a layer of confusion to reports that the Trump administration directed a communications crackdown on a handful of federal agencies.

“That’s nothing that’s coming from the White House,” Spicer told the press during his daily briefing. “They haven’t been directed by us to do anything.”

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The comments by Spicer – who has proved himself capable of delivering falsehoods from the press briefing podium – are at odds with a report from the Associated Press that employees at the Environmental Protection Agency were expressly banned from tweeting, issuing press releases or speaking with reporters by the administration.

His comments were also at odds with statements made by Doug Ericksen, communications director for Donald Trump’s transition team at the EPA on Wednesday.

Ericksen said the Trump administration was scrutinizing studies or data published by scientists at the EPA, and new work was under a “temporary hold” before it could be released.

During the briefing Spicer added that, prompted by a few isolated incidents, certain government agencies were taking action to address the “inappropriate” use of social media by employees but that this was not at the behest of the White House.

Over the administration’s first few days, at least five federal agencies including the EPA and Department of Agriculture (USDA) were reportedly directed to cut down on their publishing of public content, specifically to Twitter. The departments of health and human services (HHS), transportation (DoT) and interior (DoI) also received restrictive guidance.

Some of the directives, such as the one received by the DoT, were a “recommendation” and apparently originated within the department. But according to the Associated Press, the one directed at the EPA was much more restrictive and originated within the administration itself.

No matter their exact origins, the blackout orders were not government-wide. Representatives from several government agencies including the departments of justice and energy, as well as the Bureau of Labor Statistics, have confirmed to the Guardian that they had not been placed under any communications restrictions, including any involving social media.

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One possible connection between the affected agencies appears to be the fact that all five published data with relation to climate change, the EPA being first on that list. The USDA’s agricultural research service was also a major publisher of climate research and was the specific department targeted in the USDA guidance. BuzzFeed reported that the restrictions did not specifically mention the administration but that “department scientists around the country interpreted it as a message from Trump that changes were coming to the department”.

Later on Tuesday after the story broke, the USDA called the email sent to staff “flawed” and said the proposed policy would be replaced. “This internal email was released without departmental direction, and prior to departmental guidance being issued,” the agency said in a statement.

In apparent reaction to the news of the clampdown, a handful of individual accounts tied to the National Parks Service, a division of the DoI, began tweeting in violation of it. The Badlands national park account, for example, started tweeting facts about global warming before that thread was deleted shortly after. The account was allegedly taken over by an ex-employee.