US Supreme Court Rejects X’s Trump Appeal

The US Supreme Court said on Monday it will not hear an appeal by social media platform X, formerly Twitter, on a search warrant obtained by prosecutors in a high-profile election interference campaign against former president Donald Trump.

The justices did not explain their reasoning and no dissents were noted.

The ruling leaves intact the decision of a lower court that found a nondisclosure order attached to the warrant was valid, as informing Trump of the warrant would have jeopardised the ongoing investigation.

X argued the nondisclosure order violated its First Amendment rights to communicate with Trump.

First Amendment

The warrant was obtained by federal government special counsel Jack Smith in January 2023 to obtain information from Trump’s X account as part of the election-interference probe.

US District Judge Beryl Howell ordered X, then known as Twitter, to turn over the requested data to Smith and prohibited X from informing anyone about the order for 180 days.

Twitter, which had recently been acquired by controversial businessman Elon Musk in late 2022, withheld the records while it challenged the nondisclosure order.

Howell ultimately concluded the order was valid and imposed a $350,000 (£268,800) civil contempt sanction for failing to provide the records in a timely fashion.

Twitter eventually provided Smith with 32 direct messages linked to Trump’s account, which prosecutors said was a tiny proportion of those they had sought.

Court challenge

The company said it also provided other data sets.

the US Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit in July 2023 also found the nondisclosure order was compliant with the First Amendment, but allowed the company to notify Trump of the warrant while the appeal was pending.

The DC Circuit decision was unsealed in August 2023, providing the first public communications about the case.

Musk, who has endorsed Trump’s re-election bid and has reportedly funded Republican causes since at least 2022, has challenged other regulatory and legal orders imposed upon X.

The company resisted orders by a Brazilian Supreme Court judge to suspend accounts that were involved in an ongoing investigation, leading to the service’s suspension in Brazil in early September.

Brazil ban

In late September X began working with the court to restore service in the country, including paying millions of dollars in fines.

But last week Brazil’s Supreme Court said lawyers representing the company had paid just over $5m in fines to the wrong bank, leading to a further delay in its decision on whether to reinstate X in the country.