On Monday, October 7th, the Supreme Court of the United States rejected the appeal filed by X Corp., owned by Elon Musk, which argued that Special Prosecutor Jack Smith violated the First Amendment of the US Constitution by prohibiting the company from disclosing information obtained through a search warrant concerning former President Trump’s communications on the social media platform Twitter (now known as X).
The Supreme Court did not offer any comments in its ruling and did not present any clear objections, but simply decided to refuse hearing the case.
The case, titled “X Corp. v. United States,” involves the investigation by the Department of Justice’s Special Prosecutor Smith into Trump’s alleged interference in the 2020 US election. Smith searched for Trump’s communication information on Twitter during the investigation.
This case dates back to January last year when the Department of Justice applied for a search warrant under the federal Stored Communications Act as part of Smith’s investigation. A federal judge approved the search warrant and issued a gag order, prohibiting X Corp. from disclosing the matter to Trump or anyone else. Smith’s team believed that if the search warrant was made public, evidence could potentially be destroyed or tampered with, thus compromising the grand jury’s investigation.
Smith also stated that Trump himself did not claim executive privilege protection after learning that X disclosed his information.
Initially, X resisted the judge’s order, arguing that the gag order violated its freedom of speech rights under the First Amendment. However, the judge ultimately found the order to be valid and fined the company $350,000 for contempt of court for failing to timely produce records. X Corp. eventually handed over 32 pieces of information directly related to Trump’s account to Smith, but the prosecutor stated that this was only a “tiny fraction” of the materials they sought. X Corp. claimed that it also provided Smith with many other datasets.
In its appeal, X requested the intervention of the Supreme Court to prevent similar incidents in the future. The company stated that it receives thousands of data requests annually that cannot be disclosed, which could impact privileged communications between attorneys and clients, journalists and sources, as well as doctors and patients.
By rejecting the appeal of X Corp., the Supreme Court essentially upheld the decision of the lower courts, allowing the gag order to continue to be enforced, meaning X Corp. must keep the request for Trump information records made by Smith confidential for six months.