Millions of Twitter accounts that interacted with former President Donald Trump‘s online profile appear to be under the purview of special counsel Jack Smith‘s search warrant from January of this year, according to a government transparency suit.
The court-authorized warrant on Twitter, which the tech company fought and even attempted to warn Trump about, sought “all information from … the [Trump] account, including all lists of Twitter users who have favorited or retweeted tweets posted by the account, as well as all tweets that include the username associated with the account (i.e. ‘mentions’ or ‘replies’).” The highly specific request potentially implicates millions of users on the platform, now known as X, just because they liked or retweeted a Trump post.
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While Smith’s redacted warrant was widely covered when it was first published on Aug. 15 inside a 207-page filing, it garnered new attention from conservative media after an identical copy of it appeared on a separate court docket Monday night. News outlets in mid-August largely focused on the then-revelation that the warrant existed and the information it sought from Trump himself but less on how Trump’s followers may also have been caught in the scope of Smith’s investigation.
Mollie Hemingway, editor-in-chief at the Federalist, called Smith’s request a “dystopic nightmare” of government overreach, while legal journalists like Politico’s Kyle Cheney sought to quell concerns by explaining that the details of Smith’s search warrant had been known for months and were “extensively” reported.
“For some reason, the pro-Trump crowd has only just discovered tonight the search warrant for Trump’s Twitter account that was publicly unsealed (and extensively reported about) in August,” Cheney tweeted.
Hemingway responded that the “Pro-DOJ crowd should be far less concerned tonight about the renewed interest and more concerned by the government overreach, but presumably it’s because of this court filing dated 11/27/23.”
Pro-DOJ crowd should be far less concerned tonight about the renewed interest and more concerned by the government overreach, but presumably it’s because of this court filing dated 11/27/23: https://t.co/3kIHEyOGJh
— Mollie (@MZHemingway) November 29, 2023
Two days after the warrant copy was re-upped to the public, an order in the case entered the evening of Nov. 29 blocked, for now, any efforts by X or media intervenors to uncover more details about the heavily redacted search warrant, with the judge citing an “undeniable need” to protect Smith’s investigation from harassment and intimidation.
“Ultimately, the undeniable need to protect an ongoing criminal investigation tips the balance to and the Government’s request to continue sealing,” Chief Judge James Boasberg of the U.S. District Court for Washington, D.C., wrote in his Wednesday evening order. A notice on the docket previously indicated the order would come by Dec. 1.
“There may yet come a time when press access becomes appropriate, but at present the Application is a premature bid for sensitive information pertaining to an active investigation,” Boasberg, an Obama appointee, added.
Boasberg on Aug. 15 unsealed the redacted search warrant, which was issued in January against Twitter to retrieve the Republican front-runner’s search history, drafted tweets, blocks, and mutes, as well as additional information tied to the former president’s account. While outlets like CBS did report by Sept. 15 that Smith sought out the names of accounts that liked or retweeted Trump’s posts, such details were buried beneath the revelation that Smith had obtained 32 direct messages from Trump’s account that were part of the investigation.
Former Chief Judge Beryl Howell, an Obama-era appointee who presided over the case before Boasberg, briefly questioned during a Feb. 9 hearing why Smith’s team needed the large trove of information about people engaging with Trump posts and urged him to “refine” the request.
“All tweets that include the user name associated with the account. That could be a lot of data. So I think you need to talk to them about how to refine that,” Howell said of Twitter’s reluctance to hand data that could implicate users who interacted with Trump’s posts. The original warrant was seeking information tied to Trump’s account between Oct. 1, 2020, to Jan. 20, 2021, a relative period when Trump levied his 2020 election fraud allegations.
The full scope of the materials prosecutors obtained from Twitter is not clear, nor is the role that information played in Smith’s investigation into the former president’s actions surrounding the 2020 election. However, it’s possible millions of people could have had their information scraped as part of the Department of Justice warrant that sought records from an account followed by more than 87.4 million users.
Additionally, the final seven pages of the warrant are completely redacted. Its issuance was not taken lightly, as Twitter was fined $350,000 for failing to comply with the warrant when the social media company cited its First Amendment concerns. The company also took issue with an attached nondisclosure order that sought to bar Trump’s awareness of it until after it was executed on the social media platform.
Once the grand jury that Howell presided over handed up an indictment to Smith, Trump was charged with four felony counts on Aug. 2 for alleged attempts to stop President Joe Biden‘s 2020 electoral victory, an indictment which in part suggests Trump instigated the riot at the Capitol in January 2021. Those charges followed a June indictment against Trump for allegedly mishandling classified documents and attempting to block an investigation into the handling of those records.
Trump is also facing separate criminal charges in Georgia over a similar alleged effort to undo his election defeat and additional criminal charges in New York over allegedly falsifying business records to cover up an effort to silence a rumored affair with porn star Stormy Daniels. He has pleaded not guilty to all 91 counts as he seeks to win the GOP nomination to take on Biden again in 2024.
Boasberg’s decision on Wednesday comes just one day after his predecessor, Howell, gave a rare public speech about her experience presiding over numerous Jan. 6 Capitol riot cases, warning that the country now faces an “authoritarian” threat from “Big lies,” a term that detractors of Trump often attribute to his election fraud claims.
Without naming Trump specifically, Howell said that “big lies are springboards for authoritarians,” noting, “I regularly see the impact of big lies at the sentencing of hundreds, hundreds of individuals who have been convicted for offense conduct on Jan. 6, 2021, when they disrupted the certification of the 2020 presidential election at the U.S. Capitol.”
Trump on Wednesday took to his Truth Social media platform to once again criticize the criminal cases he faces, warning the indictments have opened up a “very big and dangerous Pandora’s Box,” adding pressure on recent suggestions that, if reelected, he would use the DOJ to prosecute his enemies.
“They have done something that allows the next party … if I happen to be president and I see somebody who’s doing well and beating me very badly, I say, ‘Go down and indict them.’ They’d be out of business. They’d be out of the election,” Trump said during a Nov. 10 interview with Univision.
The Iowa caucuses that commence the 2024 primary season are less than 50 days away as Trump prepares to embark on a new phase of his campaign overshadowed by legal woes.
The Washington Examiner contacted the special counsel’s office for response.
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Read below to see the differences between the Aug. 15 filing and the Nov. 27 filing, which include attached copies of the redacted search warrant on Twitter.
Aug. 15 redacted warrant copy:
Nov. 27 redacted warrant copy:
