US court fines X for obstructing investigation of Trump’s case

X, formerly known as Twitter, was fined $350,000 for defying a judge’s deadline to comply with a Justice Department search warrant for records related to former President Trump’s account, according to a court opinion, Report informs referring to Los Angeles Times.

The ruling revealed that special counsel Jack Smith’s office, which obtained the warrant as part of its investigation into Trump’s efforts to overturn the 2020 presidential election, had asked a judge to bar X from revealing the warrant’s existence.

Prosecutors argued that alerting the former president “would seriously jeopardize the ongoing investigation” by giving him an opportunity to destroy evidence or change his conduct.

In the 3-0 opinion, the US Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit rejected X’s objections to the nondisclosure order and upheld the lower court judge’s civil contempt sanction. The opinion notes that X ultimately complied with the warrant.