Amongst many different issues, the warrant sought the previous president’s tweets (together with drafts), likes, retweets, and any direct messages “despatched from, acquired by, saved in draft kind in, or in any other case related to” his account, @realDonaldTrump.
Twitter engineers had been capable of present what Twitter lawyer George Varghese beforehand known as “confidential communications” related to the account. He mentioned that an preliminary evaluation confirmed that “some quantity” of direct messages was current on the account however didn’t say precisely what number of messages that amounted to. Ari Holtzblatt, one other lawyer for Twitter, hinted that the information the corporate’s engineers pulled might embrace deleted direct messages, too. The corporate pulled three separate variations of Trump’s Twitter information, and never all of it was obtainable to overview on the time of the listening to in February.
One dataset got here from Trump’s account because it existed then within the firm’s manufacturing atmosphere, whereas two others got here from “prior preservations of the topic account,” dated January third–ninth, 2021, and January eleventh–twelfth, 2021, respectively. Holtzblatt added that the latter snapshot contained information going again to 2006. He mentioned later that Twitter engineers “had been capable of pull [data that] included deleted direct messages and never simply nondeleted” ones.
Twitter’s lawyer wasn’t conscious the corporate had even been served a warrant
Nevertheless, Holtzblatt instructed the courtroom, as a result of the January eleventh–twelfth, 2021, information got here from a non-production atmosphere and contained information overlaying such a very long time interval, the corporate would want to redact it manually. Holtzblatt didn’t consider the corporate was obliged by the January warrant to supply the total vary and thought redacting a full model of that preservation would take three or 4 months. He mentioned engineers had been working to trim it down and that he was “hopeful” it will be completed that day.
The info Twitter served up on February ninth was in response to a warrant the courtroom issued on January nineteenth. A lawyer for the corporate, which was (and nonetheless largely appears to be) in disarray on the time following the takeover by Elon Musk, reportedly told prosecutors days later she wasn’t conscious the corporate had even been served a warrant.
Twitter has more and more been giving up information to governments. Between October twenty seventh, 2022, and April twenty sixth, 2023, the corporate was hit by 971 requests from governments around the globe. It complied with 808 of them in full and did so partially for an additional 154, mentioned a report in Remainder of World earlier this yr.
Right here’s the total transcript of these February hearings: