Special counsel Jack Smith secretly obtained a search warrant in January for records related to former President Donald Trump’s Twitter account, according to court documents obtained by Politico Wednesday.
And the newly public document — a redacted opinion from a federal appeals court — has revealed a $350,000 secret.
A $350,000 fine was levied on Elon Musk’s Twitter over the company’s delay in complying, according to the 34-page document.
Trump had something to say.
Trump went on Truth Social to react to the newly publicized document.
The former president said he is innocent and has portrayed the investigation as politically motivated. His legal team has indicated it will argue that Trump was relying on the advice of lawyers in 2020 and had the right to challenge an election he believed was rigged.
“Just found out that Crooked Joe Biden’s DOJ secretly attacked my Twitter account, making it a point not to let me know,” Trump wrote. “My Political Opponent is going CRAZY trying to infringe on my Campaign for President.”
Meanwhile, prosecutors allege that Trump used Twitter to sow mistrust culminating in the Capitol riot.
Smith has charged Trump, in an indictment unsealed last week, with obstructing an official proceeding, conspiracy to defraud the United States and more. Trump has pleaded not guilty.
Smith is leading each of the two federal investigations into Trump. He requested the warrant as part of the Capitol riot case, but he’s also overseeing the case of classified documents.
It’s unclear what information Smith may have sought from Twitter. Possibilities include data about when and where the posts were written, their engagement and the identities of other accounts that reposted Trump’s content.
Take a look —
Twitter was fined after the appeals court rejected Twitter’s claim that it should not have been held in contempt or sanctioned.
Prosecutors got the search warrant on Jan. 17 directing Twitter to produce information on Trump’s account after a court “found probable cause to search the Twitter account for evidence of criminal offenses,” according to the ruling. The government also obtained a nondisclosure agreement that had prohibited Twitter from disclosing the search warrant, the filing says.
The court found that disclosing the warrant could risk that Trump would “would seriously jeopardize the ongoing investigation” by giving him “an opportunity to destroy evidence, change patterns of behavior” or notify his 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 the Stored Communications Act. For that reason, Twitter wanted the court to assess the legality of the agreement before it handed any information over.
The warrant ordered Twitter to provide the records by Jan. 27. A judge found Twitter to be in contempt after a court hearing on Feb. 7, but gave the company an opportunity to hand over the documents by 5 p.m. that evening. By Feb 9., Twitter finally disclosed all the necessary records by Feb. 9, the ruling says.
The appeals court wrote, “Although Twitter ultimately complied with the warrant, the company did not fully produce the requested information until three days after a court-ordered deadline. The district court thus held Twitter in contempt and imposed a $350,000 sanction for its delay.”
The Horn editorial team and the Associated Press contributed to this article.