A year after federal courts forced the company formerly known as Twitter to hand over data to special counsel Jack Smith pertaining to former President Donald Trump’s account, the company is asking the Supreme Court to prevent a similar reoccurrence.
X Corp. is asking the justices whether social media platforms can be forced to share data about their users with the government while being disabled from informing those users about the requests.
The company shared information when Smith asked for Trump’s social media account data without the latter’s knowledge. X, owned by Elon Musk, tried to delay Smith from obtaining the data initially, but its bid failed.
The federal judge presiding over that case wondered whether the company was trying to “cozy up” to the former president — allegations that Musk has faced before. Musk recently used similar Trump-supporting rhetoric as many Republicans, insinuating his felony conviction in his New York trial was “motivated by politics.”
Trump was reportedly weighing an advisory role for Musk if he wins back the White House, but Musk quashed the rumors, saying, “There have not been any discussions of a role for me in a potential Trump Presidency.”
X Corp.’s issue is not disputing the government’s power to have Trump’s records — the government could’ve pulled his social media records from the National Archives and Records Administration — but rather the fact that doing so would’ve notified Trump and potentially risked the investigation.
Musk’s company disagreed with the “nondisclosure” order barring them from notifying Trump that the government wanted his social media data, saying that the data were covered by executive privilege or the confidentiality afforded to the president. Some of the data would’ve included the tweets he had drafted, location information, and searches.
The judge and prosecutors doubted this, thinking it unlikely Trump would conduct official business via his Twitter direct messages. The court would go on to hold the company in contempt for failing to hand over the documents.
CLICK HERE TO READ MORE FROM THE WASHINGTON EXAMINER
Smith is prosecuting Trump in two of the former president’s criminal cases: the federal election interference case and the classified documents case.
Trump will likely not receive verdicts in either of those cases before the November general election.
