Jack Smith’s search warrant on Trump marks historic ‘break’ from precedent: Judge

A federal appeals court declined on Tuesday to reconsider its decision to allow the government to execute a search warrant for information related to former President Donald Trump‘s Twitter account, prompting a stiff rebuke from at least four Republican-appointed judges.

The U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit rejected Trump’s request on Tuesday to block special counsel Jack Smith from accessing his Twitter feed as part of his election interference case. A majority of the appeals court ruled to deny further review.

“Upon consideration of appellant’s petition for rehearing en banc, the response thereto, the amicus curiae brief filed by Electronic Frontier Foundation in support of rehearing en banc, and the absence of a request by any member of the court for a vote, it is ordered that the petition be denied,” the ruling states.

U.S. Judge Neomi Rao, a Trump appointee, wrote that “the decisions in this case break with long-standing precedent and gut the constitutional protections for executive privilege.”

Rao said Smith’s approach to obtaining the warrant, which also included a nondisclosure order to keep Twitter from informing Trump about the search, “obscured and bypassed any assertion of executive privilege and dodged the careful balance Congress struck in the Presidential Records Act.”

“The district court and this court permitted this arrangement without any consideration of the consequential executive privilege issues raised by this unprecedented search,” Rao said, adding, “We should not have endorsed this gambit.”

Rao’s dissent was joined by two more Trump appointees, Judges Justin Walker and Greg Katsas. Judge Karen Henderson, an appointee of former President George H.W. Bush, also joined.

The dissent added that the options for the appeals court had become limited due to the nondisclosure order preventing Twitter from informing Trump, saying if Trump had known about the warrant, he “could have intervened to protect claims of executive privilege.”

“Rather than follow established precedent, for the first time in American history, a court allowed access to presidential communications before any scrutiny of executive privilege,” Rao said.

Both a trial-level judge and a three-judge panel in the appeals court previously held that revealing the Twitter search to Trump or his representatives could hurt the grand jury investigation.

The case at hand focused on questions about the protection of communication around the presidency and whether Trump should have been informed when the special counsel’s office got approval for the warrant on his Twitter account.

Twitter, now known as X, appealed the order that the social media company not disclose the investigative inquiry. Twitter was fined $350,000 in court for delaying turning over data as it attempted to convince a judge to give Trump more information.

A three-judge panel on the D.C. Circuit is also considering Trump’s claims of presidential immunity against Smith’s four-count indictment against him. A ruling over that dispute could be imminent, and the losing party almost assuredly will appeal to the nation’s highest court.

We’re going to need a miracle for Trump to get in. The people in power don’t care what We The People want - they intend to not let their nest of vipers be disturbed any further. This is on X this morning from Simon Ameba - the African journalist who covers the WH (much to the displeasure of the Press Secretary):

I would like to tell you something uncomfortable, a bitter truth. Anything else is a lie. Do not be deceived by propagandists, demagogues, and politicians who just align with the wind. When
@NikkiHaley
said this is now a two-man race after losing Iowa, it was not about Trump.

She was referring to DeSantis and herself. This is because in the back of everyone’s mind here in DC, Trump is too dangerous to become President again and they won’t let that happen, at all costs! It is war!

Actually, the left, the deep state, and the DC establishment believe that Trump is an existential threat to the United States of America and his MAGA base has been brainwashed, and they have to take things into their own hands. They must stop him at all costs, and they will do it through the courts and eliminate him. If that does not work, they might go further, to the final option. I will refrain from mentioning it here.

This is not about trying to understand the MAGA base and asking why do they love him? Is he talking about their concerns? Is paying them the attention they need? Is he filling their needs? and any other question that you ask to win over an electorate.

@VivekGRamaswamy
spoke about it but he may change now after receiving backlash. He received a similar backlash after speaking honestly about the Israel-Palestine war, so he changed his position, and now condemns only money going to Ukraine, not to Israel, also a foreign nation. He also received a similar backlash after saying the 2020 elections were not rigged. He adjusted it by saying they were rigged by big techs and the deep state. Most MAGA people believe the elections were rigged at the ballot box. But all politicians are that way, they have to adapt to public opinion to fit in.

There are three wars that we are facing: the media war to win over independents, the legal war to disqualify Trump, and the deep state war to reportedly ‘save’ America from Trump. These wars will happen at the same time and the months ahead will be tumultuous.

Remember, no politician can speak the truth and survive. For thousands of years, the people who have spoken the truth have often been philosophers, poets, and thinkers, people who were not running for any office and did not need the approval of the public. This is because the public often rejects the truth when it contradicts their beliefs, for they prefer the comfort of illusions over the discomfort of reality.

That’s why Winston Churchill once said, “Men occasionally stumble over the truth, but most of them pick themselves up and hurry off as if nothing ever happened.” May God help us!
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