The Supreme Court will not hear Company X’s challenge to Special Counsel Jack Smith’s access to former President Donald Trump’s Twitter DMs.
In an investigation into Trump’s efforts to stay in power after the 2020 election, Smith obtained a search warrant for the messages, but Twitter was also prevented from disclosing the warrant to the former president.
Twitter’s successor company, Company X, challenged the gag order as a violation of the First Amendment.
High Court judges declined to accept the lawsuit but did not comment.
The company, owned by Elon Musk, was initially reluctant to respond to Mr. Smith’s investigation and was fined $350,000 by a district court judge for its delay. It submitted the data but objected to the terms of the confidentiality order.
However, the appellate court sided with the district judge.
“Twitter had reason to believe that the investigation was so public that the non-disclosure order was invalid,” the lawyers for Company X wrote in their petition for certification to the Supreme Court. “We had reason to believe both that the warrant requested potentially privileged presidential records.”
Smith’s team argued that the confidentiality order was necessary to protect the integrity of the investigation.
Last year, a three-judge panel of the D.C. Circuit sided with Smith, writing: “The government has presented two compelling interests in favor of withholding the search warrant: preserving the integrity of the ongoing criminal investigation into the events surrounding January and maintaining secrecy.” June 2021 6th. ”
President Trump has pleaded not guilty to election conspiracy charges brought by Smith, insisting they are all related to the former president’s efforts to overturn the results of the 2020 election.
Musk endorsed Trump in July and spoke at Trump’s rally on Saturday.