Twitter has handed over a voluminous set of data from former President Donald Trump’s account to special counsel Jack Smith, newly unsealed documents show.
Twitter, now known as X, gave Mr. Smith’s team data including deleted direct messages, other direct messages, draft posts, and information on the locations of users who posted to the account, lawyers for the company said in a Feb. 9 closed-door court hearing, a transcript of which was just made public.
The data included what Twitter described as “confidential communications,” or messages between President Trump and his senior advisers.
Twitter challenged a warrant issued by U.S. District Judge Beryl Howell, who was appointed by President Barack Obama, for the data, although the judge shot the challenge down, ruling that Mr. Smith had provided sufficient evidence for the warrant and a linked non-disclosure order.
Twitter said the latter infringed on its constitutional rights and sought clearance to alert President Trump to the warrant’s existence so he could file opposition based on claims of executive privilege, but Judge Howell upheld both orders and sanctioned Twitter for failure to provide the data in a timely manner.
While Twitter appealed the ruling, the court backed Judge Howell, finding that prosecutors had an “unquestionably compelling” interest in pursuing their investigation of President Trump and keeping it secret from him and also because the order was “narrowly tailored,” such as by limiting its duration to 180 days.
The newly released transcript was part of a tranche of unsealed documents that also includes the warrant.
Mr. Smith’s team was authorized by the warrant to obtain an extensive amount of data from Twitter, including all records from October 2020 to January 2021 of composed posts, whether they remained in draft form or not; all direct messages that were sent, received, or drafted; all devices used to access the account; and any credit card or bank account information linked to the account.
Ari Holtzblatt, an attorney representing Twitter, told the judge during the February hearing that there was no bank or credit card information associated with the account.
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