Donald Trump recently posted the following on his Truth Social account:
“Just found out that Crooked Joe Biden’s DOJ secretly attacked my Twitter account, making it a point not to let me know about this major “hit” on my civil rights. My Political Opponent is going CRAZY trying to infringe on my Campaign for President. Nothing like this has ever happened before. Does the First Amendment still exist? Did Deranged Jack Smith tell the Unselects to DESTROY & DELETE all evidence? These are DARK DAYS IN AMERICA!”
Meanwhile, Special counsel Jack Smith at the beginning of 2023 obtained a search warrant for the Twitter account of Donald Trump as part of his criminal investigation of the former president’s effort to reverse his loss in the 2020 election, a federal appeals court decision revealed Wednesday.
Twitter, now known as X, initially delayed production of the materials required by that warrant as it filed a sealed court case seeking to block an order that it does not disclose the existence of the warrant to Trump or anyone else, the decision says.
The appeals court ruling says Twitter completed its production of Trump’s account information for Smith’s office on Feb. 9.
The 34-page decision also upheld a lower-court judge’s $350,000 contempt sanction on the social media company for failing to comply with the warrant until after a three-day deadline. Smith’s office had argued, and the lower-court judge agreed, that if Twitter notified Trump of the warrant’s existence it would put the investigation at risk and give him a chance to destroy evidence that was sought by the warrant, according to the decision.
Twitter had appealed the contempt ruling and the non-disclosure order, arguing that it violated the company’s free speech rights under the Constitution’s First Amendment to communicate with “its subscriber,” Trump.
And Twitter argued that by keeping the warrant secret from Trump, he would be unable to shield communications made using his Twitter account from prosecutors by asserting executive privilege.
The company also said the order violated the federal Stored Communications Act.
The unanimous ruling against the company on all points was issued by a three-judge panel of the U.S. Court Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit.
Two of the judges on the panel, J. Michelle Childs and Florence Pan, were appointed by President Joe Biden, while the third, Cornelia Pillard, was appointed by former President Barack Obama.
The decision includes sealed information that was not visible in the public copy.
