Special counsel Jack Smith won secret subpoena for Trump’s Twitter account
Special counsel Jack Smith won a secret demand for former President Trump’s Twitter account last winter, and a judge fined the social media company $350,000 for failing to promptly comply with her order, court papers revealed Wednesday.
Smith’s team of prosecutors convinced U.S. District Court Judge Beryl Howell to order Twitter, now called X, to turn over details of Trump’s then long-suspended account in January and unspecified data tied to the account.
Trump lashed out over the news calling the judge-approved warrant a violation of his rights.
“(Prosecutors) secretly attacked my Twitter account, making it a point not to let me know about this major ‘hit’ on my civil rights,” Trump wrote on his social site.
Twitter eventually complied with the judge’s order and handed over an unknown amount of data. But the social media company stalled, claiming it should be allowed to notify Trump first.
Howell rejected that claim and fined Twitter $50,000 a day, with the fine doubled each day. After three days, Twitter paid up.
It’s not clear what Smith hoped to unearth from Trump’s Twitter or if anything more than his public posts were handed over, like unsent draft posts or location data, for example.
Trump tweeted regularly during the period between the 2020 election and Jan. 6, 2021, the timeframe he is accused by Smith of hatching a plot to overturn his election loss to President Biden.
Some of Trump’s tweets played a major role in the alleged plot to overturn the election, a point that Smith claims culminated with the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol.
He urged followers to come to Washington, D.C. on Jan. 6, promising his rally would be “wild.” He also used the platform to denounce Vice President Mike Pence even as rioters hunted down Trump’s one-time lieutenant for assassination inside the Capitol.
After Jan. 6, Trump was barred from Twitter. He was recently reinstated by new owner Elon Musk, although he has not returned to the platform.
Prosecutors got the search warrant on Jan. 17, 2023 directing Twitter to produce information on Trump’s account.
The government also obtained a nondisclosure agreement that had prohibited Twitter from disclosing the search warrant, the filing says, noting that revealing the warrant could “seriously jeopardize the ongoing investigation” by giving him “an opportunity to destroy evidence, change patterns of behavior” or notify Trump’s allies, the filing says.
Twitter objected to the nondisclosure agreement, saying four days after the compliance deadline that it would not produce any of the account information, according to the ruling.
The judges wrote that Twitter “did not question the validity of the search warrant” but argued that the nondisclosure agreement violated the First Amendment and wanted the court to assess the legality of the agreement before it handed any information over.
A higher court rejected Twitter’s claim. The dispute was unsealed by a court on Wednesday.
Trump pleaded not guilty last week to historic charges including conspiring to defraud the United States and blocking of Congress’ certification of Biden’s win.
The bombshell revelation comes as U.S. District Court Judge Tanya Chutkan scheduled a Friday morning hearing to determine how the court will restrict what Trump can publicly say about evidence and witnesses in the historic case.
Chutkan is expected to set a trial date for Trump at a separate Aug. 28 hearing.
