(Ken Silva, Headline USA) Transcripts from the February hearing between the Justice Department and Twitter over access to Donald Trump’s personal account were unsealed this week, revealing that the DOJ sought a slew of information about the former president—including his gender.
As Headline USA reported last week, the February hearing resulted in Twitter being held in contempt and fined after it failed to comply with a warrant for Trump’s Twitter info, including his direct messages.
Twitter had unsuccessfully argued that it should be able to notify Trump about the DOJ warrant because he might have executive privilege over the communications from his Twitter account.
The transcript from the hearing released this week shows that the DOJ didn’t just want access to Trump’s DMs. Prosecutors apparently wanted to know his pronouns.
According to the transcript, presiding Obama-appointed District Judge Beryl Howell asked Twitter’s lawyers if they had provided all of Trump’s info to the DOJ.
“The one item that I know that is not yet turned over but is about to be turned over is the information regarding gender,” Twitter’s lawyer responded, according to the transcript.
“We have determined that we have the gender information. We spoke to the government about the gender information yesterday,” the Twitter lawyer said in February.
“The email communication from the government suggested that the gender field was not necessarily the most pressing of information, but we gathered it. And I think, as we speak are producing the gender field information.”
Following that February hearing, Judge Howell ordered Twitter to comply with the warrant by 5 p.m. that day. When Twitter again failed to do so, Howell slapped a $350,000 fine on the company.
An appeals court upheld all of Howell’s decisions.
“In sum, we affirm the district court’s rulings in all respects. The district court properly rejected Twitter’s First Amendment challenge to the nondisclosure order,” the appeals court said in a decision unsealed last week.
“Moreover, the district court acted within the bounds of its discretion to manage its docket when it declined to stay its enforcement of the warrant while the First Amendment claim was litigated,” the court added.
“Finally, the district court followed the appropriate procedures before finding Twitter in contempt of court—including giving Twitter an opportunity to be heard and a chance to purge its contempt to avoid sanctions. Under the circumstances, the court did not abuse its discretion when it ultimately held Twitter in contempt and imposed a $350,000 sanction.”
Ken Silva is a staff writer at Headline USA. Follow him at twitter.com/jd_cashless.
