YOU’RE IN HIS DMS

Jack Smith Has Trump’s Draft Tweets and Direct Messages

The special counsel obtained a search warrant to quietly strip-mine the former president’s account, with newly unsealed transcripts hinting at what he was looking for.

Newly unsealed court transcripts reveal special counsel Jack Smith gained access to a number of the former president’s communications on Twitter, including his direct messages, searches, and draft tweets—the fruit of a previously sealed search warrant signed by a federal judge in January. Prosecutors asked for “all content, records and other information” related to Trump’s account from Oct. 2020 to Jan. 2021, including location data, details on interactions between Trump and other users, and “all tweets created, drafted, favorited/liked,” retweeted or deleted. The transcripts also show that the judge—who granted Smith’s office permission to shield the search warrant from Trump over concerns he would sabotage it—reprimanded Twitter’s lawyers about the company’s “extraordinary” requests to be allowed to give Trump a heads-up before turning over the records. “Is it because the new CEO wants to cozy up with the former president?” she asked at one point, in reference to Elon Musk. The existence of the search warrant was first reported last week. On Monday, a furious Trump took to Truth Social to blast Smith for “breaking into my Twitter account without informing me and, indeed, trying to completely hide this atrocity from me.”