Special Counsel Jack Smith subpoenaed and obtained a search warrant for former President Trump’s Twitter account according to court filings unsealed Wednesday.
The case was decided in July. Twitter, now known as X, was ordered to turn over the documents sought by Smith and was also fined $350,000 for a three-day delay in complying with a court order for Trump’s records.
“The district court found that there were ‘reasonable grounds to believe’ that disclosing the warrant to former President Trump “would seriously jeopardize the ongoing investigation” by giving him ‘an opportunity to destroy evidence, change patterns of behavior, [or] notify confederates,’” the U.S. Court of Appeals for D.C. noted in its ruling.
Twitter was also prohibited from disclosing the existence of the search warrant to anyone including Trump.
According to The Hill:
DOJ, which first sought the records in January of this year, also obtained a nondisclosure order which prohibited Twitter from disclosing the existence or contents of the search warrant to anyone, including Trump himself.
The filing details a months-long battle between Twitter and the special counsel’s office over the efforts to get information tied to Trump’s account, with an appeals court backing a lower court ruling “in all respects.”
According to Deadline:
Twitter argued that the nondisclosure order was a violation of the First Amendment and the Stored Communications Act, and that the district court should have delayed the enforcement of the search warrant until those issues were resolved.
Trump pled not guilty last week to four conspiracy charges brought by Smith over his efforts to retain power after the 2020 presidential election.
The indictment referred to a number of Trump’s tweets, including one he posted as the attack on the Capitol was unfolding on January 6. Posted at 2:24 p.m. that day, it read, “Mike Pence didn’t have the courage to do what should have been done to protect our Country and our Constitution, giving States a chance to certify a corrected set of facts, not the fraudulent or inaccurate ones which they were asked to previously certify.
“USA demands the truth!”
