Special counsel Jack Smith’s team obtained a search warrant in January for records related to former President Donald Trump’s Twitter account, and a judge levied a $350,000 fine on the company for a delay in complying, according to court documents released Wednesday.
The details were included in a decision from the federal appeals court in Washington rejecting Twitter’s claim that it should not have been held in contempt or sanctioned.
X, the San Francisco-based platform formerly known as Twitter, sent an automated reply to a request for comment, saying it would respond soon.
The filing says prosecutors got the search warrant directing Twitter to produce information on Trump’s account after a court “found probable cause to search the Twitter account for evidence of criminal offenses.” The government also obtained a nondisclosure agreement prohibiting Twitter from disclosing the search warrant, the filing says.
The court found that disclosing the warrant could risk that Trump would “would seriously jeopardize the ongoing investigation” by giving him “an opportunity to destroy evidence, change patterns of behavior,” the filing says.