McKinney shared a picture of the Twin Towers burning, with a hand slotting in a puzzle piece with "Zionists" written across it, to make up the full sentence "Zionists did it." She captioned the tweet "The Final Piece of the Puzzle."
Among those to condemn her antisemitic conspiracy was New York Congressman Jamaal Bowman.
"At a time when antisemitic hate is increasing nationwide & solidarity has never been more important, this is what we're not going to do. This is antisemitic. It is hateful. It is misguided and ignorant," he said.
.@Twitter won't remove @Cynthiamckinney's tweet that says "Zionists" are responsible for 9/11, claiming it's "strong political commentary."This antisemitic conspiracy theory promotes violence against Jews.Twitter must stand against antisemitism. Remove the tweet now. pic.twitter.com/K5806pWdPg
— American Jewish Committee (@AJCGlobal) June 28, 2021
In contrast to the condemnation from Bowman and other public figures, Maram Susli, a Syrian Australian YouTube creator, known by her social media handle "PartisanGirl," tweeted her agreement in the replies, saying "to skeptics, read this," with a link to an article claiming to prove the dangerous theory. McKinney later retweeted Susli's reply, continuing to push the conspiracy by doing so.
Susli, a self-described geopolitical analyst, has been involved in a number of antisemitic scandals herself.
This is not the first time that McKinney has shared antisemitic claims in public or on her social media. In 2009, she accused "the pro-Israel lobby of sabotaging her political career," according to the Anti-Defamation League. She has also referred to conspiracies regarding the Rothschilds, which claim that the famous Jewish family controls the world's wealth and financial institutions in past tweets, and has shared claims that "powerful people conspire to kidnap children and have blood rituals," a belief which is directly linked to antisemitic blood libel. Following the US strike that killed Qasem Soleimani in January 2020, McKinney took to Twitter, saying: “Guaranteed: Trump’s statement about Soleimani and Iran was written in Israel. ALL LIES. Donald Trump [is a] Zionist puppet.”
Most recently, in May 2020 she shared a link to a Haaretz article and said, in a display of Holocaust denial, that "the figure [of Jews killed in the Holocaust] wasn't six million after all."