Posted on 01/17/2024 8:11:01 AM PST by Twotone
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.
It is not clear whether Trump plans to appeal this matter to the Supreme Court.
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.
You’s gotsa OJ jury and an
Obama judge....
They gonna bend you over, and
Gonna pack yo’fudge.
Agreed
Just another tool to use in the future…..
Unfortunately, our judicial and legal system has lost a lot of credibility with these stupid shenanigans.
The win at all costs will cost.
Smith was trying to get everything related to Trump’s Twitter account, including DMS, messages and posts that were composed and not sent, as well as everyone who followed, unfollowed, liked/unliked, retweeted, *or mentioned* his account. Absurdly broad.
He did it in a manner which, with the cooperation of the court panel, denied any ability for Trump to assert executive privilege or even know about the attempt, as the Presidential Records Act requires that he be informed at least 30 days before the Archivist turns over any of his documents so that he can decide whether to go through judicial review to assert Executive Privilege. The National Archives also had a copy of Trump’s account, but Smith went directly to Twitter so that Trump would not be informed.
He received a similar backlash after speaking honestly about the Israel-Palestine war, so he changed his position,
This isn’t Trump’s case. It is Twitter’s, and they appealed it. Trump has his own paths to dispute it.
Smith was/is trying and using every freedom-stealing dirty trick in the corrupt DOJ book to get Trump, period. Once, when Hillary was working on the Watergate House investigation staff, she argued that Nixon should not be allow benefit of counsel in addressing accusations involving Watergate. Were it possible, Smith would be arguing the same for Trump.
“Dissenting opinions are interesting... But the decision is made and Trump lost.”
Dissenting opinions are not only interesting but they lay out the pathway for SCOTUS to overturn the court’s decision.
That was a quote from Simon Ateba. The part that I thought was important was that when Nikki said it’s now a 2 person race that she meant herself and RDS because DC has zero intention of letting Trump back in power.
Constitutional protections for executive privilege.
Now are only for the selected few the democrats.
The constitution about to be another document to disappear.
Get Trump, and Orange man bad! Is the law of today. NO justice but injustice.
WHAT? When did this happen? Nobody tells me anything.
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