Newly released court documents show that Special Counsel Jack Smith obtained a search warrant for former President Donald Trump’s Twitter account. As part of his ongoing investigation that has so far yielded several indictments, Smith also served a non-disclosure agreement along with the warrant to Twitter (now named “X”), prohibiting the social media company from revealing the existence of the warrant. Trump’s Twitter account is a matter of public record, begging certain questions about the purpose and the use of such a court maneuver.
Trump himself was quick to respond to the breaking news, writing on his TruthSocial account:
“Just found out that Crooked Joe Biden’s DOJ secretly attacked my Twitter account, making it a point not to let me know about this major “hit” on my civil rights. My Political Opponent is going CRAZY trying to infringe on my Campaign for President. Nothing like this has ever happened before. Does the First Amendment still exist? Did Deranged Jack Smith tell the Unselects to DESTROY & DELETE all evidence? These are DARK DAYS IN AMERICA!”
Liberty Nation spoke with Legal Affairs Editor Scott D. Cosenza, Esq. about whether Trump’s free speech rights have been violated and to ask what ramifications such a move might have.
Mark Angelides: Scott, were such actions by Smith’s team a matter of course, or is something novel taking place here?
Scott D. Cosenza: The law Smith used to seek the records includes a provision authorizing courts to issue accompanying gag orders under certain circumstances. It’s not a novel application of the law.
MA: It seems that Trump’s tweets are a matter of public record and, because he is a former POTUS, were already archived in numerous places. What could Smith hope to find that isn’t already available?
SDC: No copy of the warrant is publicly available, so we can’t be 100% sure. All we have to go on is this appellate decision, challenging the district court orders. I suspect Smith might especially want access to Trump’s sent and received direct messages that are stored on their servers.
MA: If the investigative team went after his Twitter account, with a gag clause for Twitter (for which the company was fined $350,000 for delays while trying to fight it), what are the chances that they also, or have already, sought warrants on his other social media accounts?
Donald Trump (Photo by Julie Bennett/Getty Images)
SDC: Any supposition here has to start with a 100% likelihood they are after every account where they might find valuable data.
MA: The big question for me, Scott, is that if the DOJ now controls Trump’s X account and is possibly in the process of getting others, too, isn’t this detrimental to both Trump’s First Amendment rights and his political campaign to become the 47th president?
SDC: Isn’t that the point? The Biden Justice Department’s novel application of seldom-used criminal laws to prosecute the president’s chief rival and likely general election opponent makes this move totally suspect. As it does all enforcement actions against Trump. President Biden and his pollical appointees are waging war against Trump by leveraging the federal criminal courts against him. Here they managed to spy on an account revealing all manner of useful information against Trump politically and shut up any potential criticism about it.
