Supreme Court rejects Elon Musk’s lawsuit against special counsel Jack Smith over Trump’s messages

The Supreme Court on Monday rejected a case brought by Elon Musk’s X Corp. against special counsel Jack Smith over his seizure of former President Donald Trump’s private messages on Twitter surrounding his challenge of the 2020 election results.

The social media platform argued that the justices should review a lower court’s decision to uphold a federal warrant requiring X — formerly known as Twitter — to turn over Mr. Trump’s private communications, arguing that move ran afoul of First Amendment protections and Mr. Trump’s assertions of executive privilege.

The warrant required X to turn over the communications to the federal government and not notify Mr. Trump about the handover for 180 days.

Lower courts sided with the government, which had argued Mr. Trump and his representatives shouldn’t be made aware of the request for his communications because it could interfere with a federal investigation into his election-related challenges.

Mr. Smith told the high court not to review the case, arguing that no executive privilege existed.

“The Fourth Amendment permits the government to obtain a warrant to search property belonging to an innocent third party as long as the warrant is supported by probable cause that ’evidence of a crime will be found,’” Mr. Smith said in his filing.

Lawyers for X Corp., though, said the implications of the lower courts’ decision to uphold the warrant have far-reaching implications.

“In cases involving executive privilege, which typically arise in the D.C. Circuit, the government can now … deny privilege-holders their opportunity to assert privilege by seeking communications from, and gagging, third parties,” lawyers for X wrote.  

“And in the tens of thousands of other cases where the government obtains nondisclosure orders, the government can invade other privileges — including attorney-client, journalist-source, and doctor-patient — without notice. Meanwhile, the First Amendment rights of service providers like Twitter to notify users in time for them to assert privileges can be irreparably injured,” they wrote. 

It would have taken four justices to vote in favor of hearing the challenge for oral arguments to have been granted.