Court documents released Monday by the Justice Department show that special counsel Jack Smith successfully obtained access to everyone who liked, retweeted or mentioned Donald Trump on Twitter, now known as X.
The search warrant, issued in January by the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia, is part of Smith’s investigation into Trump’s actions leading up to the Capitol incursion of Jan. 6, 2021.
The release of the documents came as a result of a lawsuit brought by a consortium of media organizations seeking to bring sunlight to the special counsel’s probe into Trump, the New York Post reported.
Several of the documents the DOJ released are heavily redacted, including 8 of the 14 pages of the search warrant, which are completely redacted.
However, one of the pages indicated that Smith demanded “All information from the ‘Connect’ or ‘Notifications’ tab for [Trump’s] account, including all lists of Twitter users who have favorited or retweeted tweets posted by the account, as well as all tweets that include the username associated with the account (i.e. “mentions” or “replies”).”
The DOJ also sought all users that Trump “followed, unfollowed, muted, unmuted, blocked, or unblocked, and all users who have followed, unfollowed, muted, unmuted, blocked, or unblocked” his account.
Conservative podcaster and attorney Eric Matheny responded to the warrant’s release highlighting, “If you liked or retweeted Trump’s tweets – the DOJ wants to know. Special Counsel Jack Smith’s search warrant for Trump’s Twitter account specifically seeks lists of Twitter users who engaged with Trump’s account.”
“This government is out of control!” he added.
