Article Image

News Link • Courtroom and Trials

Supreme Court Rejects Musk's Case Against Jack Smith Over Trump's Twitter Records

• https://www.zerohedge.com, by Jack Phillips

In 2023, Smith obtained a warrant for Trump's Twitter account as part of federal prosecutors' 2020 election case against the former president. Trump had frequently used the account during the 2016 presidential campaign and during his first administration.

The high court on Monday rendered its decision without any comment. There were no noted dissents.

The Musk-owned platform had initially refused to comply with a nondisclosure order and was fined $350,000 by a judge in August 2023, records show. At the time, the court had rejected X's claim that it should not have been held in contempt or sanctioned.

Smith's team repeatedly mentioned Trump's posts on Twitter in the first indictment, which was unsealed last year. A revised indictment was brought against Trump by Smith in September after the Supreme Court separately ruled in July that presidents should be declared broadly immune from prosecution for their official acts and duties. Trump has pleaded not guilty to all the charges in the case.

Prosecutors obtained the search warrant on Jan. 17, 2023, directing Twitter to produce information on Trump's account after a court "found probable cause to search the account for evidence of criminal offenses," according to last year's court ruling. The government also obtained a nondisclosure agreement that had prohibited Twitter from disclosing the search warrant, the filing says.

In its appeal to the Supreme Court in May, X argued that Smith's team carried out an "unprecedented end-run around executive privilege" by obtaining a "nondisclosure order preventing Twitter from notifying former President Trump of a warrant for private communications that he sent and received during his presidency."

"Although Twitter had provided these communications to the National Archives and Records Administration (NARA), the government informed Twitter and the district court that it 'did not want to obtain data from NARA, as it would require notification [to the former President] pursuant to the Presidential Records Act,'" the petition said.


www.BlackMarketFridays.com