Four appellate court judges, including Judge Naomi Rao, slammed Jack Smith’s search through President Trump’s private Twitter/X files. Smith’s team violated Donald Trump’s executive privilege. The condemnation was so harsh that the judges involved and Smith should be humiliated, but they won’t be because they got their way.
This is also a condemnation of Judge Beryl Howell, and Judge Florence Pan who approved it.
The court document states: “This case turned on the First Amendment rights of a social media company, but looming in the background are consequential and novel questions about executive privilege and the balance of power between the President, Congress, and the courts.”
“Seeking access to former President Donald Trump’s Twitter/X account, Special Counsel Jack Smith directed a search warrant at Twitter and obtained a nondisclosure order that prevented Twitter from informing President Trump about the search,” the judges added. “The Special Counsel’s approach obscured and dodged the careful balance Congress struck in the Presidential Records Act. The district court and this court permitted the arrangement without any consideration of the consequential executive privilege issues raised by this unprecedented search.”
“We should not have endorsed this gambit,” the judges added.
“‘Any court completely in the dark as to what Presidential files contain is duty bound to respect the singularly unique role under Art. II of a President’s communications and activities’ by affording such communications a presumptive privilege,” the judges added, citing the legal precedent in United States v. Haldeman.
ONTO THE SUPREME COURT
Jack Smith and administration have no problem violating every right that Donald Trump has. At the same time, they don’t mind stepping all over the constitution. They will do anything to win. They are threat to democracy.
“The case can now move to the Supreme Court,” the report added.
“Without a presumption for executive privilege, new questions will invariably arise, particularly because nothing in the panel’s opinion is limited to a former President,” the judges said.
“What if, in the course of a criminal investigation, a special counsel sought a warrant for the incumbent President’s communications from a private email or phone provider?
“And how might Congress benefit from this precedent when it seeks to subpoena presidential materials from third parties in an investigation or impeachment inquiry?” Rao and the other judges asked.
WHAT SMITH DID
Politico reported, “Special counsel Jack Smith has extracted data from the cell phone Donald Trump used while in the White House and plans to present evidence of his findings to a Washington, D.C. jury to demonstrate how Trump used the phone in the weeks during which he attempted to subvert the 2020 election.”
Data from the ex-president’s phone, Politico added, “could reveal day-to-day details of his final weeks in office, including his daily movements, his Twitter habits and any other aides who had access to his accounts and devices. The data, for example, could help show whether Trump personally approved or sent a fateful tweet attacking his vice president, Mike Pence, during the Jan. 6 riot at the Capitol.”
According to the court filing, the government has an expert witness to testify about Trump’s geolocations during the J6 riot. Jack Smith plans to use his locations to make them look bad.
In late November, DOJ prosecutors collected a massive collection of data about the former president’s social media activity that included every account that liked or followed him or retweeted it.
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