US Appeal Court Issues $350,000 Fine to Elon Musk’s X Over Donald Trump’s Records

Despite having a search warrant for former US President Donald Trump’s Twitter account, the US special counsel had to experience continuous delays on Twitter’s side

Elon Musk’s ‘X’ has just been fined $350,000 by the US Appeals Court for the District of Columbia Circuit over non-compliance in the investigation of former US President Donald Trump’s Twitter account.

US Special council, the authority investigating Donald Trump, obtained a search warrant for the former president’s Twitter account back in January, however, it faced a series of delays in its investigation particularly because of non-compliance from X’s side.

Holding Twitter, now known as X, in contempt and issuing a $350,000 (PKR 100,660,455) fine on Twitter, the US Court of Appeals said that Twitter had expressed worries related to the First Amendment (freedom of speech) regarding a legal order that prevented them from talking about a search warrant, adding that the company wanted to inform Trump about this warrant.

“Under the circumstances, the court did not abuse its discretion when it ultimately held Twitter in contempt and imposed a $350,000 sanction,” the court added.

Donald Trump, while discussing the matter on his social media site Truth Social, criticized the Justice Department saying that they had “secretly attacked my Twitter account, making it a point not to let me know about this major ‘hit’ on my civil rights.”

While all of Trump’s tweets are publicly viewable, what the US Special council wants to access is non-public information such as direct messages, drafts of tweets, location data and even the type of devices he was using to send out tweets.

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