NY Times senior editor apologizes after past anti-Semitic tweets surface. Paper calls posts 'a clear violation of our standards'

A senior editor at the New York Times has apologized after anti-Semitic tweets he sent years ago resurfaced.

What did he say?

Tom Wright-Piersanti, a senior staff editor, works with the politics desk at the Times, according to his Twitter bio.

In a now-deleted tweet published by Breitbart, Wright-Piersanti wrote on Jan. 1, 2010, "I was going to say 'Crappy Jew Year,' but one of my resolutions is to be less anti-Semitic. So… HAPPY Jew Year. You Jews."

A few weeks earlier, he had tweeted a photo of a car with a Jewish Menorah on its roof and the caption "Who called the Jew-police?" While the photo still exists, this tweet has also been deleted.

In another tweet, which still exists at the time of this article's publication, he wrote "There are four indian guys with mohawks in this one class, and each one is a douche in his own awful way. I hate mohawk Indians."

He has since apologized

In a tweet on Thursday, Wright-Piersanti wrote "I have deleted tweets from a decade ago that are offensive. I am deeply sorry."

The New York Times also responded

In a statement to CNN's Oliver Darcy, a spokesperson for the New York Times said, "We are aware of these tweets, which are a clear violation of our standards. We are reviewing next steps."

What else?

This incident occurred nearly four months after the Times published an editorial cartoon of President Donald Trump and British Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu that was widely seen as anti-Semitic. The cartoon showed Trump with dark glasses and a yarmulke being led by a dog with the face of Netanyahu with the Star of David on his collar. The paper apologized and pulled the cartoon.

Since then, the Times has banned all editorial cartoons in an attempt to avoid further controversy.

Breitbart, which broke the Wright-Piersanti story, has its own history with anti-Semitism. In March 2016, conservative author Ben Shapiro had resigned from Breitbart over a disagreement with how the publication had handled one of their female reporters being grabbed by former Trump campaign manager Corey Lewandowski.

After Shapiro quit, Breitbart published a piece bashing him that featured Shapiro's face inside a yellow star. The piece was published under the byline William Bigelow, which Shapiro later revealed was a pseudonym used by his own father, who had also quit the company.

Breitbart editor Joel Pollak, whom the article calls "Shapiro's friend and fellow Orthodox Jew," would later say that he had written the article but that it had been published by mistake.