Appeals Court Gives Jack Smith Access to Trump’s Twitter Account

(L) Special Counsel Jack Smith delivers remarks in Washington on Aug. 1, 2023; Former President Donald Trump attends his trial in New York State Supreme Court in New York City on Dec. 7, 2023. Drew Angerer; David Dee Delgado/Getty Images

A federal appeals court has denied an appeal by Twitter (now renamed X) of a ruling that gave special counsel Jack Smith access to former President Donald Trump’s Twitter account.

Last year, Mr. Smith secured a search warrant to get access to the former president’s account on Twitter, which features the handle @realDonaldTrump, as well as a nondisclosure order that prevented Twitter from informing President Trump about the search.

Initially, Twitter refused to comply and was fined $350,000 and held in contempt by a judge, court filings show.

Twitter attorneys appealed but in a split decision on Jan. 16, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia ruled on the matter and denied a review.

“Upon consideration of appellant’s petition for rehearing en banc, the response thereto, the amicus curiae brief filed by Electronic Frontier Foundation in support of rehearing en banc, and the absence of a request by any member of the court for a vote, it is ordered that the petition be denied,” the order reads.

Four members of the court, all appointed by Republican presidents, offered a statement disagreeing with the decision.

“We should not have endorsed this gambit,” the dissenting judges wrote, referring to Mr. Smith’s approach to obtaining President Trump’s Twitter records, which they said “obscured and bypassed any assertion of executive privilege and dodged the careful balance Congress struck in the Presidential Records Act.”

Twitter can appeal to the U.S. Supreme Court to hear the matter.

The company’s press team responded to a request for comment on the ruling and a query over whether it intends to appeal to the U.S. Supreme Court with its customary message: “Busy now, please check back later.”

There was no immediate reaction to the ruling from President Trump.

‘Judicial Disregard of Executive Privilege’

When the search warrant was publicly disclosed last summer, President Trump expressed his displeasure in a scathing post on Truth Social.

“How dare lowlife prosecutor, Deranged Jack Smith, break into my former Twitter account without informing me and, indeed, trying to completely hide this atrocity from me,” the former president wrote on Aug. 13, 2023.

Mr. Smith could have gained access to the content of President Trump’s Twitter account from the National Archives, but this would have triggered a notification to President Trump and prevented Mr. Smith’s bid to keep it a secret.

Instead, the special counsel applied for a search warrant targeting Twitter, which included a nondisclosure notice, effectively preventing President Trump from asserting executive privilege over the records.

“The court here permitted a special prosecutor to avoid even the assertion of executive privilege by allowing a warrant for presidential communications from a third party and then imposing a nondisclosure order,” the dissenting judges wrote.

Special counsel Jack Smith delivers remarks on a recently unsealed indictment including four felony counts against former U.S. President Donald Trump in Washington, on Aug. 1, 2023. Drew Angerer/Getty Images

“The options at this juncture are limited,” the dissenting judges continued. “Once informed of the search, President Trump could have intervened to protect claims of executive privilege, but did not, and so these issues are not properly before the en banc court.”

The dissenting judges added that, in ruling against Twitter’s appeal, the lower court did not consider the “consequential executive privilege issues raised by this unprecedented search.”

“Judicial disregard of executive privilege undermines the Presidency, not just the former President being investigated in this case,” they added.

President Trump was charged by Mr. Smith last summer over his alleged attempts to overturn the 2020 election. The former president pleaded not guilty and asserted that the case is politically motivated.

More Details

Court documents related to Mr. Smith’s search warrant for President Trump’s Twitter account show that federal prosecutors wanted his search history, blocked users, mutes, and drafts of tweets, while also seeking information on users that interacted with the former president.

Initially, the search warrant was sent to Twitter and later a court asked the social media firm to hand over information relating to the former president’s account, including IP addresses that were “used to create, login, and use the account.”

The social media company also was asked to hand over “advertising information, including advertising IDs, ad activity, and ad topic preferences,” per court documents.

The warrant also sought President Trump’s Twitter search history, direct messages, and the “content of all tweets created, drafted, favorited/liked, or retweeted” between October 2020 and January 2021.

Twitter’s lawyers attempted to fight back by saying Mr. Smith’s warrant was a violation of the First Amendment and Stored Communications Act, although the challenge failed, leading to an appeal, which was denied on Jan. 16.

The latest ruling comes as President Trump faces numerous legal battles in Georgia, Florida, and another in New York.

While maintaining his innocence, President Trump has claimed that the various legal troubles were orchestrated by his political rivals for election interference.

President Trump is the front-runner by far for the 2024 Republican presidential nomination.

Jack Phillips contributed to this report.