According to a newly revealed and redacted court document, Special Counsel Jack Smith obtained a search warrant back in January of this year for TFG’s Twitter account, @realdonaldtrump. Of course, Twitter jerked the Special Counsel’s office around and did not comply with the warrant, which resulted in a federal judge holding the company in contempt and levying a $350,000 fine. The federal court of appeals in Washington, D.C. recently upheld that fine.
And before anyone goes down the MAGAt rabbit hole and turn this latest development into some conspiracy theory or anything else that is far from the truth, the US Government has the authority under The Stored Communications Act (the “Act”), 18 U.S.C. § 2701 et seq., gives law enforcement the right “…to obtain evidence from electronic service providers in criminal cases. The Act permits the government to obtain a search warrant or court order that directs the service provider to turn over ‘the contents of [ a subscriber’s] wire or electronic communication”or ‘a record or other information pertaining to a subscriber.'”
“On January 17, 2023, the government applied for, and obtained, a search warrant that directed Twitter to produce data and records related to the “@realDonaldTrump” Twitter account. At the same time, the government applied for, and obtained, a nondisclosure order, which prohibited Twitter from disclosing the existence or contents of the search warrant to any person. Based on ex parte affidavits, the district court found probable cause to search the Twitter account for evidence of criminal offenses. Moreover, 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….”
Read the document below:
