The United States Supreme Court decided not to analyze an appeal from platform X related to a search warrant that required the delivery of profile data from former president Donald Trump, current Republican candidate for president. The decision was reported this Monday (7) by the agency Associated Press (AP).
The case concerns a warrant obtained in January 2023 by American prosecutors investigating Trump’s alleged attempt to interfere in the 2020 elections and his connection to the invasion of the Capitol, which took place on January 6, 2021.
That month, prosecutors from the US Department of Justice obtained a warrant to access data from Trump’s X account, on the grounds that this information was essential to the investigation into the former president’s alleged attempts to overturn the election results in who was defeated by Joe Biden. A lower court had determined that the company must hand over the data to prosecutor Jack Smith, responsible for the case, in addition to prohibiting the disclosure of the warrant to Trump for a period of 180 days, with the aim of not “compromising the investigation”.
Despite delays in complying with the warrant, which resulted in a fine of US$350,000 for X, the platform ended up handing over part of the data associated with Trump’s account.
In the appeal presented to the Supreme Court, Elon Musk’s platform X specifically questioned the judicial prohibition that prevented the company from notifying Trump about the search warrant referring to his profile data. OX asserted that this restriction violated the First Amendment of the United States Constitution, which guarantees freedom of expression, and argued that the former president should have had the opportunity to claim “executive privilege” — a prerogative that protects presidential data from being disclosed. The platform also expressed concern that without legal action limiting the use of such orders, the US government could extend this practice to hack confidential communications from other cases.
The prosecutors investigating the case, led by Smith, claim that Trump did not use his X account for official functions, which would void the validity of executive privilege in this context. Furthermore, they again mentioned the lower court’s decision to state that informing Trump about the search warrant at that time could compromise the investigation that is still ongoing, allowing possible interference or destruction of evidence.
Investigators wanted access to Trump’s data on X because they allege that the Republican used the networks to spread “false information” about the 2020 election and prevent the certification of Biden’s victory in Congress.
The Supreme Court judges did not reveal the reasons that led them to decide not to analyze the appeal presented by X.
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