Judge granted Jan. 6 probers access to Don Twitter account
Special counsel Jack Smith won a secret demand for former President Donald 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 gave in.
It’s not clear what Smith hoped to unearth from Trump’s Twitter account or if anything more than his public posts were handed over, like unsent draft posts, location data or direct messages 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.
A grand jury in the case indicted Trump on historic charges including conspiring to defraud the United States and blocking of Congress’ certification of Biden’s win.
The bombshell Twitter 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.
Meanwhile, in the Mar-a-Lago classified documents case, Trump asked U.S. District Court Judge Aileen Cannon to get the feds to set up a secure facility for him to view top secret materials with his lawyers at Mar-a-Lago itself.
Defense lawyers urged Cannon to order officials to re-create a facility at the resort that Trump used while he was president, arguing that it would be too time-consuming for him to have to travel to a courthouse as any other defendant would be required to do.
“Immense practical and logistical hurdles and costs ... make it virtually impossible for [former] President Trump to make regular trips to a public facility,” the lawyers argued in a nine-page filing.
Some legal analysts mocked the request, noting that Trump is accused of stashing boxes of sensitive documents at the resort for months in plain view in bathrooms and ballrooms.
“Trump ... is asking Judge Cannon to make the literal scene of the crime into a [Sensitive Compartmented Information Facility],” Katie Phang, an MSNBC legal analyst, tweeted.