Musk’s X Fined $350,000 in Secret Justice Department Fight Over Trump Records
- Jack Smith obtained a search warrant for Trump Twitter account
- Twitter lost fight to notify Trump about the warrant
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Twitter Inc., now rebranded as X, was fined $350,000 for defying a judge’s deadline to comply with a Justice Department search warrant for records related to Donald Trump’s social media account, according to a court opinion unsealed on Wednesday.
The ruling revealed that Special Counsel John “Jack” Smith’s office obtained the warrant as part of its investigation into Trump’s efforts to overturn the 2020 election. Prosecutors had asked a judge to bar Twitter from revealing the warrant’s existence, arguing that alerting the former president “would seriously jeopardize the ongoing investigation” by giving him an opportunity to destroy evidence or change his conduct.