(RepublicanDaily.org) – Twitter, or “X,” as owner Elon Musk wants everyone to call it now, isn’t done with controversy it seems, as court documents have revealed that the company was made to pay a $350,000 fine to the government.
In a court opinion recently unsealed and made available to the public, Twitter was fined due to failure to meet a deadline set by the U.S. Department of Justice to submit records that related to former President Donald Trump’s third indictment. Trump was once a prolific Twitter user and poster, but got banned from the platform last year. He was only recently reinstated, following Musk’s takeover of Twitter.
Special Counsel Jack Smith and his team obtained a warrant for Trump’s records as part of the investigation for the indictment, but asked the judge to impose a gag order on the matter. Prosecutors cited concerns that Trump or his camp could delete tweets if informed about the warrant, which would effectively constitute destruction of evidence.
Twitter filed an appeal with the US Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit, reasoning that the warrant violated its right to free speech and that the former President should have to the opportunity to argue that his tweets were covered by executive privilege. The appeals court sided with the government and Twitter ended up paying the fine and forking over the records Smith and his team wanted.
Court records also show that Twitter was given multiple deadlines to submit the data, but it either ignored the deadline or submitted “incomplete” records. Prosecutors also had a hard time serving the warrant and had difficulty once the warrant was served. Several days after the warrant was eventually served, counsel for the former commander-in-chief said that she did not know about warrant at all.
Trump, who has not posted on Twitter for some time – his last post was before Biden’s inauguration in last year – characteristically called the DOJ’s actions a “major ‘hit’ on my civil rights” in a post on Truth Social, a Twitter-like social media platform. Trump owns Truth Social, and has been active there since he was banned. In the same post, the former chief executive said that “Crooked Joe Biden” was “going CRAZY(sic) trying to infringe” on his upcoming bid to reenter the White House.
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