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By Ewan Palmer
News Reporter
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The federal government may have obtained vital information from Donald Trump's Twitter Direct Messages [DMs] after the social media company was forced to hand over data on the former president's account, according to a lawyer.
Legal analyst and former federal prosecutor Joyce Vance was reacting to details revealed in a Politico report on the lengths the social media company, now called X, went to to prevent data about the former president's account being handed over to federal prosecutors as part of Special Counsel Jack Smith's investigation into the events that led up to the January 6 attack.
Vance also suggested that prosecutors got "high value" information once Twitter eventually handed over the information being sought, which included Trump's Direct Messages [DMs], information on where certain tweets were sent from, and devices used to log in to the account, and tweets which had been "stored in draft form."
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"This thread is fascinating—confirming prosecutors got high value from DMs, location info, etc," Vance posted on X while sharing Politico journalist Kyle Cheney's breakdown of his reporting.
"It suggests the govt had a close informant who gave them the PC they needed to get into the account & who they were strenuously protecting from Twitter's efforts to disclose to Trump."
Newly unsealed court filings reveal how Twitter fought with a judge to stop the information being handed over to Smith's office after prosecutors obtained a search warrant in January. The social media company took several steps to try to inform Trump about the warrant despite concerns the former president may delete or destroy potential evidence being sought in the federal case once he was made aware of it.
Judge Beryl Howell hit out at the "extraordinary" attempts that Twitter took to remove a nondisclosure order that prohibited the social media company from notifying anyone about the existence of the warrant, despite never having done so for any other Twitter user apart from Trump. Twitter has been contacted for comment via email.
Twitter had claimed that handing over the data would violate the First Amendment. The company also suggested that some of the data, such as Trump's DMs, could be covered by executive privilege. Howell dismissed this suggestion, noting it would be highly unlikely Trump would be conducting official presidential business using Twitter's DM service.
Howell questioned whether the hope of informing Trump about the search warrant was an attempt by the platform's owner Elon Musk to "cozy up" to the former president, who has not returned to posting on his formerly beloved social media site despite having his account reinstated last November.
"Is this to make Donald Trump feel like he is a particularly welcomed new renewed user of Twitter?" Howell asked, reported Politico.
"Twitter has no interest other than litigating its constitutional rights," replied attorney George Varghese, who was representing Twitter during the legal arguments.
The information federal prosecutors obtained from Trump's Twitter account was cited in the indictment against the former president, who has pleaded not guilty to four charges under Smith's January 6 investigation.
Howell found Twitter in contempt of court for initially refusing to comply with the federal search warrant and fined the company $50,000 on February 2, doubling for each day of noncompliance. Twitter eventually complied on February 9, and paid a $350,000 fine.
In a Truth Social post on Monday, Trump said: "How dare lowlife prosecutor, Deranged Jack Smith, break into my former Twitter account without informing me and, indeed, trying to completely hide this atrocity from me. What could he possibly find out that is not already known."
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