Twitter fought to protect Trump's civil rights as federal prosecutors sought Donald Trump's draft tweets and deleted DMs

Ian Miles Cheong

Special counsel Jack Smith has reportedly obtained a significant amount of data from former President Donald Trump's personal Twitter account, as revealed by recently unsealed court records.

Politico reports that the effort to access the account took place in January and February, prior to Twitter's rebranding as "X", and was strongly opposed by its owner Elon Musk.

U.S. District Judge Beryl Howell imposed a $350,000 fine on the company for its delay in complying with the search warrant. The judge also criticized the company for going to "extraordinary" lengths to avoid handing over the data and for allegedly alerting Trump about the search warrant.

The judge speculated that Musk might have been trying to win favor with Trump in hopes of encouraging him to return to the platform, an idea that Twitter's attorneys dismissed.

According to Politico, Twitter was ordered to turn over the following information:

• Accounts associated with @realdonaldtrump that the former president might have used on the same device.
• Devices used to log into the @realdonaldtrump account
• IP addresses used to log into the account between October 2020 and January 2021.
• Privacy settings and history
• All tweets “created, drafted, favorited/liked, or retweeted” by @realdonaldtrump, including any subsequently deleted.
• All direct messages “sent from, received by, stored in draft form in, or otherwise associated with” @realdonaldtrump
• All records of searches from October 2020 to January 2021
• Location information for the user of @realdonaldtrump from October 2020 to January 2021

Trump responded to the news of the search warrant on his account by framing it as an attack by the Biden administration. "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 posted on social media. "My Political Opponent is going CRAZY trying to infringe on my Campaign for President. Nothing like this has ever happened before."

He continued with a question about free speech rights. "Does the First Amendment still exist?" he asked. "Did Deranged Jack Smith tell the Unselects to DESTROY & DELETE all evidence? These are DARK DAYS IN AMERICA!"