Donald Trump's Movements Were Tracked by Twitter—Prosecutor

Federal prosecutors obtained a search warrant for Donald Trump's Twitter account to prove the former president had sent potentially damning tweets during and around the January 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol, according to an expert.

While appearing on MSNBC, Kristy Greenberg, former deputy chief of the Southern District of New York's criminal division, discussed how Special Counsel Jack Smith's office had sought a warrant for Trump's account on Twitter, now called X, in January 2023, and the social media company was fined for initially refusing to comply.

It is unclear what information prosecutors were seeking with their search warrant on Trump's account. However, Greenberg speculated that the Department of Justice (DOJ) wanted to prove that Trump was the one who sent tweets that were referenced in the January 6 indictment detailing the four charges to which the former president has pleaded not guilty.

Among some of the tweets cited by the federal government in the 45-page indictment against Trump was one sent in December 2020 urging his supporters to attend "wild" election protests in Washington, D.C., on January 6, 2021.

President Donald Trump looks at his phone during a roundtable at the White House, on June 18, 2020. The DOJ may have been able to obtain information about the Capitol riot with a search warrant for Trump's Twitter account. Alex Wong/Getty Images

As the violence at the Capitol was unfolding, Trump also posted a message claiming that former Vice President Mike Pence "didn't have the courage to do what should have been done" by preventing the 2020 election results from being certified, which Greenberg said could prove his intent to pressure Pence to overturn the election results.

"When I was a prosecutor, I did many Twitter search warrants. And among the things I would look for was to be able to show that the person who was using the account who was sending the tweets from that account was actually the person that I was looking to charge," Greenberg said.

"So here, Donald Trump could potentially say, 'Well, I didn't send that tweet. It was some other aide, a social media manager.' So [prosecutors] want to be able to say 'The defendant tweeted the following.' And the fact that they're so definitive about that in the indictment, they don't say this is a tweet from the account. They say that 'defendant tweeted' it, it means they know," Greenberg added.

Greenberg said that the information the DOJ was seeking could be obtained as Twitter stores location and GPS information which would provide "really precise" details of "exactly where he was at the time and on the date" that the tweets were sent.

"And it's interesting, the tweet about Mike Pence not having the courage to reject or delay the count, that came after advisers tell Trump there has been a riot at the Capitol, the Capitol had been breached, and he sends it anyway," Greenberg said.

"So that goes towards intent. What is his intent? To delay that certification of the count. So that's the key to the objective of this conspiracy. That tweet is critical to proving his intent."

Newsweek reached out to Trump's legal team via email for comment.

The details of the search warrant and subsequent fine handed to Twitter were revealed on Wednesday after the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals unsealed a previously redacted version of the ruling.

Twitter didn't oppose the search warrant itself but argued that a nondisclosure order preventing the social media company from notifying anyone about the existence or contents of the warrant violated the First Amendment.

The court agreed that the former president should not know about the warrant as there were "reasonable grounds to believe" Trump would have an "opportunity to destroy evidence" if he was aware of its existence.

District Court Judge Beryl Howell rejected Twitter's First Amendment argument and found the company in contempt on February 2. Howell then issued Twitter with a fine of $50,000, doubling for each day of noncompliance. The company eventually complied on February 9 and paid a $350,000 fine.

In a post on Truth Social on Wednesday, Trump said while attacking the investigation that he had only just heard about the search warrant for information on his account.

"Just found out that Crooked Joe Biden's DOJ secretly attacked my Twitter account, making it a point not to let me know about this major 'hit' on my civil rights," Trump wrote. "My Political Opponent is going CRAZY trying to infringe on my Campaign for President. Nothing like this has ever happened before. Does the First Amendment still exist?"