Newly unsealed search warrants have exposed the extreme lengths that Democrat President Joe Biden’s Department of Justice (DOJ) has gone to to crack down on his political opponents.
The heavily redacted files show that Biden’s DOJ demanded that X, which was called Twitter at the time, hand over data on “all users” who interacted with President Donald Trump’s account before January 6, 2021.
Trump’s account was shut down by Twitter on January 8, 2021, two days after his final post.
The 14-page search warrant includes eight completely redacted pages.
It reveals that the DOJ’s Special Counsel Jack Smith demanded that Twitter turn over Trump’s search history, location data, and privacy and account settings from October 2020 to January 2021.
The warrant also ordered Twitter to surrender Trump’s private direct messages.
The search warrant was issued to Twitter in January.
It was released to the public on Monday as part of a lawsuit brought by several media organizations.
The lawsuit is an attempt to shed light on the partisan investigation into Trump.
It called on Twitter to provide the DOJ with the “content of all tweets created, drafted, favorited/liked, or retweeted by” Trump’s account.
That content included “deleted tweets.”
Smith requested a list of “all users” Trump’s account “followed, unfollowed, muted, unmuted, blocked, or unblocked.”
He also wanted data on “all users who have followed, unfollowed, muted, unmuted, blocked, or unblocked” his account.
“All information from the ‘Connect’ or ‘Notifications’ tab for the 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 warrant stated.
The DOJ seemingly demanded information on every conceivable aspect of the former president’s social media account.
The request even included information on the devices Trump used to log in, advertising information, IP addresses, and any communications with Twitter’s team regarding the account.
It further demanded that the social media company not notify Trump about the requested information.
“Twitter is ordered to disclose the above information to the government within 10 days of issuance of this warrant,” the filing added.
The remainder of the search warrant included entirely redacted pages.
Twitter argued that the nondisclosure order violated the First Amendment and the Stored Communications Act.
Smith contended that notifying the 45th president “would result in a statutorily cognizable harm,” according to additional documents released by the DOJ on Monday.
“The NDO was granted based on facts showing that notifying the former president would result in destruction of or tampering with evidence, intimidation of potential witnesses, or other serious jeopardy to an investigation or delaying of trial,” Smith claimed.
In August, X was issued a $350,000 fine for refusing to turn over the information within the court-ordered timeframe.
The social media company ultimately complied with the DOJ’s demands, however.
X began providing the requested information three days after the deadline.
