Supreme Court boots Elon Musk’s fight with Jack Smith over Trump’s Twitter records
The Supreme Court on Monday declined to hear an appeal from Elon Musk’s X Corp. claiming special counsel Jack Smith violated the First Amendment when he obtained a search warrant for former President Donald Trump’s messages on Twitter and then barred the company from disclosing it.
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Smith sought Trump’s communications on Twitter, now known as X, as part of the investigation into the former president’s efforts to overturn the 2020 election. Trump was indicted last year and his case remains pending in US District Court in Washington.
Twitter, which argued Trump should be allowed to claim executive privilege over the records, initially declined to comply and was fined $350,000. The company didn’t challenge the search warrant itself but rather the gag order.
In its appeal to the Supreme Court, X described the nondisclosure order as an “unprecedented end-run around executive privilege.” The company said the implications were potentially far-reaching if the government attempted to collect information covered by other privileges, such as those involving a doctor and a patient.
