A federal appeals court rejected Tuesday’s request to reconsider its decision granting special counsel Jack Smith’s team access to former President Donald Trump’s X account, including his direct messages.
X had sought to prevent prosecutors from obtaining the information, but a three-judge panel rejected the request in July.
The company appealed to the full US Court of Appeals for the DC Circuit to rehear the matter, which the court declined to do on Tuesday.
“Having considered appellant’s petition for rehearing en banc, its response, the amicus curiae brief filed by the 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,” wrote court.
The four conservative justices on the 11-member bench said they would grant en banc review.
“Smith ordered a search warrant at Twitter and obtained a nondisclosure order preventing Twitter from informing President Trump of the search,” the dissenting judge wrote.
Donald Trump enjoyed a landslide victory in the Iowa caucuses on Monday. Reuters
“The district court and this court allowed this arrangement without any consideration of the consequential executive privilege issue raised by the unprecedented search.”
Smith’s team filed a subpoena against X in January last year for records stemming from Trump’s account on the platform.
The company suspended Donald Trump’s account after the Capitol riots. Reuters
Prosecutors obtained material to support the pending four-count 2020 election interference case against the 77-year-old.
X has been fined at least $350,000 for resisting subpoenas, court documents reveal. The company screamed that it could not tell Trump about the situation.
X unsuccessfully argued before a three-judge panel that prohibiting it from notifying its users about search warrants violated the First Amendment.
Jack Smith obtained the records as part of his pending 2020 election case against Donald Trump. Getty Images
Ultimately, the company turned the information over to prosecutors, according to court records.
Before a three-judge panel took up the case, a lower court judge ruled that disclosing the warrant would give Trump “an opportunity to destroy evidence, change patterns of behavior, [or] tell the confederation.”
Material obtained from Trump’s largely inactive account on the platform includes location data, draft posts, searches and more.
One of the judges noted that the data set “includes 32 direct messages sent by President Trump.”
Once a serial Twitter poster, Trump has since used Truth Social as his platform of choice to vent various rants and other thoughts.
The 45th president was fired from X after the Capitol riots on January 6, 2021, but was allowed to return after Tesla tycoon Elon Musk took over.
Trump has only made one post on X since being released from the doghouse — featuring his now-famous mugshot in a Georgia crime case.
Trump has vehemently denied wrongdoing and pleaded not guilty to the four counts, like all other criminal cases against him.
Currently, his legal team is fighting to get the criminal charges thrown out on the grounds of presidential immunity.
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Source: thtrangdai.edu.vn/en/
