Newly released court filings reveal that a federal judge in the District of Columbia was concerned that Donald Trump would destroy evidence from his personal account on X, formerly Twitter.
On Wednesday, the U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia unsealed a decision that upheld the D.C. District Court's ruling granting special counsel Jack Smith's team a search warrant for @realDonaldTrump as part of the probe into Trump's efforts to overturn the 2020 election.
"Based on ex parte affidavits, the district court found probable cause to search the Twitter account for evidence of criminal offenses," the filing read. "Moreover, the district court found that there were 'reasonable grounds to believe' that disclosing the warrant to former President Trump "would seriously jeopardize the ongoing investigation" by giving him "an opportunity to destroy evidence, change patterns of behavior, [or] notify confederates.'"
The dispute was brought to light after X appealed the district court's decision to issue the warrant. The dispute also indicated that prosecutors obtained permission from the judge to keep the warrant outside of Trump's knowledge because of fears that he might destroy evidence from his social media account that wasn't posted publicly.
Smith's probe of Trump in the 2020 election case resulted in his indictment last week on four felony counts, which include conspiracy to defraud the U.S. government and witness tampering. The former president has denied wrongdoing in the case and pleaded not guilty to all the charges.
"It's not clear why Smith executed a search warrant for Trump's Twitter account, but he might have been interested in draft tweets and DMs," former federal prosecutor Renato Mariotti posted on X.
Although he was banned from Twitter days after the January 6, 2021, Capitol riot, Trump's access was restored after new owner Elon Musk took over the platform that month. The former president has not used the account since.
Responding to the news that federal prosecutors had quietly obtained a search warrant on January 17, 2023, Trump blasted the Department of Justice on his Truth Social platform and accused the federal government of violating his constitutional rights.
"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," Trump wrote on Wednesday.
He went on: "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!"
Newsweek reached out to the Trump presidential campaign via email for comment.
The court papers revealed that X refused to comply with the request to keep the warrant from Trump. The platform argued that doing so would violate the company's right to communicate with one of its users and would prevent Trump from being able to assert executive privilege claims.
The judge held X in contempt and fined the company $350,000 for not fully producing the records being sought until February 9, three days after the court-ordered deadline.
