Prosecutors in special counsel Jack Smith's office won access to a trove of former President Donald Trump's Twitter direct messages from October 2020 to January 2021 under a search warrant executed in January, a newly unsealed court document revealed Tuesday. A lawyer for Twitter, now called X, told U.S. District Judge Beryl Howell that the company had found both "deleted" and "nondeleted" DMs associated with Trump's account, and had given Smith's office "all direct messages, DMs," including those sent, received and "stored in draft form."
It's not publicly known what was in Trump's DMs, "of which there were many," CNN reported, or who wrote them. But that he even had private messages in his Twitter account is "a revelation," The New York Times added, since Trump "has famously been cautious about using written forms of communications in his dealings with aides and allies."
Trump is "famously known for not really emailing," but it's possible he was only "receiving private DMs coming in and maybe not sending them out," former federal prosecutor Ryan Goodman told CNN. The government "must have had probable cause" to obtain a warrant for that much information from Trump's account, for so many months, he added, and even if the DMs are only incoming, that's "still very valuable information."
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The document unsealed Tuesday details the robust and unusual effort Twitter undertook to stop Smith's team from keeping the warrant secret from Trump. If Trump found out about the warrant, prosecutors argued, they had specific evidence it "would result in destruction of or tampering with evidence, intimidation of potential witnesses or serious jeopardy to this investigation." Twitter lost the fight and was fined $350,000 for delaying compliance with the warrant, earlier court documents showed.
Smith's team charged Trump in August over his efforts to overturn his 2020 election loss. The indictment included several Trump tweets but not private communications, CNN noted. A spokesperson for Trump, asked for comment, pointed the Times to a statement the former president posted to his Truth Social account Monday, calling Smith a "lowlife" and questioning why he broke into his Twitter account. "What could he possibly find out that is not already known," he wrote.
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