Special counsel Jack Smith’s team obtained a search warrant in January for records related to former President Donald Trump’s Twitter account, and a judge levied a $350,000 fine on the company for a delay in complying.
The Twitter part of this is hilarious. Basically Twitter was so disorganized they didn’t respond to the warrant on time and ended up with a $350k fine. Twitter was arguing against the protective order that prevented them from talking about it, but they didn’t contest the validity of the warrant and handed over the information. This all played out months ago, we’re finding out about it now because the appeals court decision has been partially unsealed.
From Politico’s article on this:
The opinion describes the Justice Department’s “difficulties” in initially making contact with Twitter — which had only recently been taken over by Musk — to serve the search warrant. Prosecutors first attempted to contact the company on Jan. 17 via its website for legal requests but found the page to be inoperative. On Jan. 19, the company finally connected with prosecutors but did not immediately comply with the warrant. On Jan. 25, when prosecutors prodded Twitter again, the company’s counsel claimed she “had not heard anything about the warrant.”
Finally, on Feb. 1, four days after the production deadline, Twitter raised a legal objection to the nondisclosure order.
“Although the company did not question the validity of the search warrant, it asserted that the nondisclosure order was facially invalid under the First Amendment,” Pan noted. “Twitter informed the government that it would not comply with the warrant until the district court assessed the legality of the nondisclosure order.”
On Feb. 2, Twitter filed a motion to vacate the nondisclosure order and Smith’s team sought a contempt order from Howell. Howell held Twitter in contempt and approved fines beginning at $50,000 a day, doubling for each day of noncompliance.
“The court adopted that suggestion, noting that Twitter was sold for over $40 billion and that its owner’s net worth was over $180 billion. Twitter did not object to the sanctions formula,” the appeals court noted.
Twitter did not fully comply until Feb. 9, resulting in the $350,000 fine.
The Twitter part of this is hilarious. Basically Twitter was so disorganized they didn’t respond to the warrant on time and ended up with a $350k fine. Twitter was arguing against the protective order that prevented them from talking about it, but they didn’t contest the validity of the warrant and handed over the information. This all played out months ago, we’re finding out about it now because the appeals court decision has been partially unsealed.
From Politico’s article on this:
The opinion describes the Justice Department’s “difficulties” in initially making contact with Twitter — which had only recently been taken over by Musk — to serve the search warrant. Prosecutors first attempted to contact the company on Jan. 17 via its website for legal requests but found the page to be inoperative. On Jan. 19, the company finally connected with prosecutors but did not immediately comply with the warrant. On Jan. 25, when prosecutors prodded Twitter again, the company’s counsel claimed she “had not heard anything about the warrant.”
Finally, on Feb. 1, four days after the production deadline, Twitter raised a legal objection to the nondisclosure order.
“Although the company did not question the validity of the search warrant, it asserted that the nondisclosure order was facially invalid under the First Amendment,” Pan noted. “Twitter informed the government that it would not comply with the warrant until the district court assessed the legality of the nondisclosure order.”
On Feb. 2, Twitter filed a motion to vacate the nondisclosure order and Smith’s team sought a contempt order from Howell. Howell held Twitter in contempt and approved fines beginning at $50,000 a day, doubling for each day of noncompliance.
“The court adopted that suggestion, noting that Twitter was sold for over $40 billion and that its owner’s net worth was over $180 billion. Twitter did not object to the sanctions formula,” the appeals court noted.
Twitter did not fully comply until Feb. 9, resulting in the $350,000 fine.
$50K per day, doubling every day, that will get pretty much anybody’s attention, damn.
Would have been interesting if the poop emoji auto reply had been implemented at this time.
Also it’s hilarious that they took Elon’s “richest man in the world” bragging & turned it against him.