Prosecutors working for Jack Smith, the particular counsel who has twice introduced indictments towards former President Donald J. Trump, obtained a search warrant early this 12 months for Mr. Trump’s lengthy dormant Twitter account as a part of their inquiry into his try and overturn the 2020 election, in response to courtroom papers unsealed on Wednesday.
The warrant, which was signed by a federal decide in Washington in January after Elon Musk took over Twitter, which is now known as X, provides a brand new dimension to the scope of the particular counsel’s efforts to analyze the previous president.
The courtroom papers, which emerged from an enchantment by Twitter difficult the decide’s resolution to subject the warrant, didn’t reveal what prosecutors had been on the lookout for in Mr. Trump’s Twitter account, which the tech firm shut down simply days after the assault on the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021.
But the papers point out that prosecutors acquired permission from the decide to not inform Mr. Trump for months that that they had obtained the warrant for his account. The prosecutors feared that if Mr. Trump realized concerning the warrant, it “would seriously jeopardize the ongoing investigation” by giving him “an opportunity to destroy evidence, change patterns of behavior, [or] notify confederates,” the papers mentioned.
Source: www.nytimes.com