Special counsel Jack Smith recently acquired a search warrant for former President Donald Trump’s Twitter account, according to newly disclosed court records. The warrant was related to an undisclosed investigation, and it was served with a nondisclosure order, meaning Twitter was prohibited from telling anyone about the warrant’s existence. This has only recently come to public attention with the release of these court documents.
Twitter, now known as X, initially resisted complying with the warrant by challenging the nondisclosure order. However, this challenge was unsuccessful, leading to delays in delivering the required information. As a result, a federal judge fined the company $350,000 for contempt and the decision was later upheld by a federal appeals court in Washington, D.C. A redacted version of the appellate court’s opinion was released, unveiling this previously unreported legal battle.
The legal struggle culminated in Twitter’s eventual compliance with the warrant, but not without additional delays. Trump’s Twitter account was only turned over to Smith’s investigation three days after the court-ordered deadline. A three-judge panel of the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals dismissed Twitter’s argument that the nondisclosure order was in violation of the First Amendment, and that the warrant should have been stopped until the dispute was resolved, further affirming the court’s decisions in the case.
