X Requests Supreme Court Review of Trump Files Rulings

The social media site X, formerly known as Twitter, is appealing to the U.S. Supreme Court to review previous rulings that required the company to release data from Donald Trump’s account without notifying him.

The decisions allowed special counsel Jack Smith to bypass executive privilege in an unprecedented manner, as stated in a filing by X.

During his investigation into Trump’s alleged actions to undermine the 2020 election, Smith obtained a search warrant for data related to Trump’s Twitter activities, searches, and communications from October 2020 to January 2021, while Trump was still in office.

Furthermore, Washington, D.C., District Judge Beryl Howell issued a “nondisclosure order” preventing X from informing Trump about Smith’s subpoena for the records. The D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals upheld Howell’s decision in January.

X stated in its filing to the SCOTUS that this was the first time in American history that a court ordered the disclosure of presidential communications without notifying the President or addressing executive privilege.

X is seeking to prevent this from happening again with two questions presented to the Supreme Court:

1. Whether a service provider can be compelled to produce potentially privileged user communications before challenging a nondisclosure order that prohibits notification to the user, and before the user has the chance to claim privilege, including executive privilege.

2. Whether the First Amendment allows gagging a provider in a high-profile investigation without demonstrating that disclosure would compromise the integrity of the investigation or disproving a less-restrictive alternative.

X, now owned by Elon Musk and represented by the law firm WilmerHale, resisted turning over the data, arguing that Smith’s subpoena was an unprecedented violation of executive privilege.

In February 2023, X was fined $350,000 by Judge Howell for delaying the production of the data requested by Smith.