(IntegrityPress.org) – Tech behemoth and Twitter owner Elon Musk has been forced to hand over a total of 32 private messages that former President Donald Trump sent during his tenure on the platform. According to a November 20 report, special counsel Jack Smith forced Musk’s hand on the matter after accusing him of delaying the turnover of Trump’s communications.
Smith was reportedly seeking the former head-of-state’s messages as part of his ongoing election subversion investigation. Prior to January 8 of 2021, Trump was a frequent user of the platform and sometimes posted multiple times each day.
His well-covered banning the next day angered his supporters and proponents of free speech. Trump’s opponents on the left, which included a chorus of Democratic legislators, praised then-owner Jack Dorsey’s move.
After his account was restricted, the ex-President responded by migrating fully to his own social media platform, Truth Social. In November of 2022, just one month after Musk acquired Twitter, he reinstated the former Commander-in-Chief’s ability to post.
Aside from a single isolated instance, Trump has chosen to remain off the platform. His respite of sorts comes in spite of a number of public statements from Musk in which he opined that the former leader of the Free World should never have been banned to begin with.
Despite the former President’s absence from the platform, both his account and his private messages remained in the electronic ether. Special counsel Smith’s initial request for the messages in question prohibited Musk or any of his platform administrators from informing the ex-President about the query.
According to several reports, Musk was unhappy with the fact that his company was barred from telling Trump’s legal team about the developments. Smith’s original brief was finally unsealed on November 17, though the information contained in it had largely already been covered in the media.
Since being reinstated to Twitter, Donald Trump has posted nothing except his mugshot.
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