A dump of documents from the Special Counsel’s office shows Twitter turned over a slew of information from Donald Trump’s account, including direct messages and other communications, but only after a furious battle during which the judge accused the company’s owner of slow-walking compliance with a warrant to curry favor with Trump.
Prosecutors ultimately got a load of data from the social media platform, essentially from all the things Twitter collects from all its users, as summarized by Politico:
- Accounts associated with @realdonaldtrump that the former president might have used in the same device
- Devices used to log into the @realdonaldtrump account
- IP addresses used to log into the account between October 2020 and January 2021.
- Privacy settings and history
- All tweets “created, drafted, favorited/liked, or retweeted” by @realdonaldtrump, including any subsequently deleted.
- All direct messages “sent from, received by, stored in draft form in, or otherwise associated with” @realdonaldtrump
- All records of searches from October 2020 to January 2021
- Location information for the user of @realdonaldtrump from October 2020 to January 2021
We’ve known for about a week that Twitter was fined $350,000 for failing to comply with the order and turning over Trump’s information. What we didn’t know is that DC District Court Judge Beryl Howell accused Twitter owner Elon Musk of trying to protect Trump: “Is it because the new CEO wants to cozy up with the former president?”
Howell also asked who else had access to Trump’s Twitter account for archival purposes, with Twitter informing the judge that the designated representatives to the National Archives.