“The district court found probable cause to search the Twitter account for evidence of criminal offenses,” the three-judge panel said in its ruling. “Moreover, the district court found that there were ‘reasonable grounds to believe’ that disclosing the warrant to former President Trump ‘would seriously jeopardize the ongoing investigation’ by giving him ‘an opportunity to destroy evidence, change patterns of behavior, [or] notify confederates.”
It’s not yet clear what Smith was looking for on Trump’s account. The former president favored Twitter over every other form of communication, and used the platform to push his election fraud conspiracies and encourage his followers to come to Washington on January 6, 2021. Many people arrested in connection with the January 6 insurrection said they felt that Trump’s tweets were a direct call to arms.
Smith could try to use Trump’s tweets to demonstrate a pattern of behavior, part of proving one of the conspiracy charges against the former president. Trump was charged last week with trying to overturn the 2020 election and faces four counts of conspiracy to defraud the United States, conspiracy to corruptly obstruct an official proceeding, obstruction of and attempt to obstruct an official proceeding, and conspiracy against the right to vote.