Elon Musk’s Twitter Delayed a Search Warrant for Trump’s Account

Elon Musk’s Twitter refused to comply with a federal search warrant for Donald Trump’s Twitter account, resulting in hundreds of thousands of dollars in fines for the social media company, according to court documents released Wednesday.

Special counsel Jack Smith obtained the warrant in mid-January and served the warrant to Twitter, now called “X,” alongside a “nondisclosure order.” The order barred the social media platform from informing Trump that his account would be searched.

After being  served the warrant, however, the company took several days to respond. Twitter then filed a motion to vacate the nondisclosure order on February 2, arguing the order violated the First Amendment, and refused to comply. The company demanded that U.S. District Court Judge Beryl Howell, who was overseeing the case at the time, block enforcement of the search warrant until the matter was resolved.

Instead, Howell found Twitter in contempt and fined the platform $50,000 a day, doubling for each day of noncompliance. Twitter still did not comply with the warrant until February 9, resulting in a total of $350,000 in fines.

Twitter appealed the ruling, but in July, an appeals court upheld Howell’s decision, the documents released Wednesday show.

“The district court found probable cause to search the Twitter account for evidence of criminal offenses,” the three-judge panel said in its ruling. “Moreover, the district court found that there were ‘reasonable grounds to believe’ that disclosing the warrant to former President Trump ‘would seriously jeopardize the ongoing investigation’ by giving him ‘an opportunity to destroy evidence, change patterns of behavior, [or] notify confederates.”

It’s not yet clear what Smith was looking for on Trump’s account. The former president favored Twitter over every other form of communication, and used the platform to push his election fraud conspiracies and encourage his followers to come to Washington on January 6, 2021. Many people arrested in connection with the January 6 insurrection said they felt that Trump’s tweets were a direct call to arms.

Smith could try to use Trump’s tweets to demonstrate a pattern of behavior, part of proving one of the conspiracy charges against the former president. Trump was charged last week with trying to overturn the 2020 election and faces four counts of conspiracy to defraud the United States, conspiracy to corruptly obstruct an official proceeding, obstruction of and attempt to obstruct an official proceeding, and conspiracy against the right to vote.