Special counsel obtained a trove of Trump's Twitter DMs, court filing reveals

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."

Subscribe to The Week

Escape your echo chamber. Get the facts behind the news, plus analysis from multiple perspectives.

SUBSCRIBE & SAVE
https://cdn.mos.cms.futurecdn.net/flexiimages/jacafc5zvs1692883516.jpg

Sign up for The Week's Free Newsletters

From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.

From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.

Sign up
Peter Weber, The Week US

Peter has worked as a news and culture writer and editor at The Week since the site's launch in 2008. He covers politics, world affairs, religion and cultural currents. His journalism career began as a copy editor at a financial newswire and has included editorial positions at The New York Times Magazine, Facts on File, and Oregon State University.