Because of a dispute over Trump data
Twitter fined $350,000
08/10/2023, 00:08
As part of his investigation into the storming of the capital, US special counsel Jack Smith wants to examine the Twitter account of former US President Donald Trump. However, the group is reluctant to provide the requested data – and belatedly. This now results in a penalty.
The online platform Twitter, recently renamed X, has been fined $350,000 (around €320,000) for failing to hand over documents relating to ex-President Donald Trump’s user account to special counsel Jack Smith in a timely manner. This emerges from a publicly made judgment of a federal appeals court in the capital Washington. Smith last week filed charges against Trump over his attempts to overturn the outcome of the 2020 presidential election.
According to the court ruling that has now been made public, the special counsel employed by the Justice Department successfully applied for a search warrant in January that required Twitter to hand over data and documents relating to Trump’s user account @realDonaldTrump. Smith also achieved that Twitter is not allowed to inform anyone about this search warrant – not even Trump.
The company of technology billionaire Elon Musk took legal action against this non-disclosure order and therefore initially did not hand over the documents requested by Smith. A judge then demanded that the Internet company hand over the documents under threat of a fine. Because this was only completed three days after the deadline, the judge imposed a fine of $350,000. Twitter then went to an appeals court, but lost in mid-July. This decision against the online platform, which has been kept secret until now, has now become known – more than a week after the indictment against Trump.
Trump wants to take back the White House in 2024
Trump’s tweets are publicly viewable. However, the company also has non-public information such as short messages sent only to certain people, draft tweets, location data and the type of device used to send tweets. Trump said on his social network Truth Social that the Justice Department had “secretly attacked my Twitter account and was careful not to let me know about this major ‘attack’ on my civil rights.”
Smith accuses the ex-president of using illegal means to overturn the results of the 2020 presidential election. After his defeat by Democrat Joe Biden, Trump made false allegations of election fraud and tried to prevent Biden’s election victory from being confirmed. Finally, on January 6, 2021, radical Trump supporters stormed the Capitol in Washington, when Biden’s election victory was to be finally certified there. Trump, who wants to retake the White House in the November 2024 presidential election, is accused of, among other things, conspiracy to defraud the United States. The 77-year-old Republican has pleaded not guilty to all four counts.