Trump accused the DOJ of "secretly attacking" his Twitter account.
Sanctions were applied after the social media platform delayed compliance with a federal search warrant that required Twitter to hand over Donald Trump's Twitter data without telling the former president about the warrant for 180 days.
The purpose of a fine is to get compliance, not to punish. The fine was $50,000, doubling every day. So $350,00 dollars means Musk caved after 3 days. Pretty effective tactic by the court.
At first, Twitter resisted producing Trump's data and argued that the government's nondisclosure order violated the First Amendment and the Stored Communications Act.
However, US circuit judge Florence Pan wrote that the court was largely unpersuaded by Twitter's arguments, mostly because the government's interest in Trump's data as part of its ongoing January 6 investigation was "unquestionably compelling."
The government then took the extra step to apply for a nondisclosure order, which was granted because "the district court found that there were 'reasonable grounds to believe' that disclosing the warrant to former President Trump 'would seriously jeopardize the ongoing investigation' by giving him 'an opportunity to destroy evidence, change patterns of behavior, [or] notify confederates.'"
The court checked with Twitter and confirmed that it was capable of meeting a rapid deadline and turning over the data by 5:00 pm that evening.
The court rejected Twitter's "good faith" arguments, mainly because the company blew past the original deadline and repeatedly failed to raise concerns at earlier opportunities.
While Twitter appealed the decision, the company "paid the $350,000 sanction into an escrow account maintained by the district court clerk's office."
Meanwhile, Twitter was late in its attempts to oppose the sanctions formula. The court opinion said that Twitter's counsel "belatedly" pointed out that "roughly one month of noncompliance" would have "required Twitter to pay a sanction greater than 'the entire world's gross domestic product.'"
The government immediately tried to serve Twitter with the search warrant—which required Trump's data to be shared within 10 days—but the website where Twitter gathers legal requests was "inoperative."
Did they auto-reply to the request with a poop emoji?
I feel like it should be noted that Twitter didn't have any objections at all to handing over all of Trump's data. Thier only issue was with not telling him about it.