A federal appellate court on Tuesday rejected a request that special counsel Jack Smith be blocked from accessing former President Donald Trump's X feed.
A split panel of U.S. Court of Appeals for Washington D.C., issued the ruling against the social media company's effort to block Smith's search warrant and denied further review. Another appellate panel had rejected Trump's original request.
"Upon consideration of appellant's petition for rehearing ... it is ordered that the petition be denied," the ruling states.
Conservative judges on the court disagreed, saying that Trump was denied the opportunity to argue he had presidential immunity against charges he attempted to overturn the 2020 election.
"The Special Counsel's approach obscured and bypassed any assertion of executive privilege and dodged the careful balance Congress struck in the Presidential Records Act," the conservative judges wrote in their dissent. "The district court and this court permitted this arrangement without any consideration of the consequential executive privilege issues raised by this unprecedented search."
The current clear front-runner for the 2024 Republican presidential nomination, Trump can ask the Supreme Court to review the matter.
Trump has claimed the presidency is "cloaked with absolute immunity" from prosecution.
Smith, who charged Trump with 2020 election interference, obtained a search warrant in January for records related to Trump's X account, and a judge in August levied a $350,000 fine on the company for missing the deadline to comply.
The social media site turned over 32 direct messages from Trump's account on the platform to Smith's office, NBC News reported in September.
Smith's team got access to Trump's draft tweets and direct messages despite "momentous" pushback from the social media company, according to court papers unsealed in mid-August.
Axios last month reported that Smith plans to show evidence in the federal 2020 election case of Trump making false claims about electoral fraud since at least 2012.
The outlet added that Smith plans to present posts from the social media platform as evidence of the "defendant's historical record" of making false fraud claims.
Twitter, now known as X, shut down Trump's account after the Jan. 6, 2021, Capitol attack.
The Associated Press contributed to this story.
Charlie McCarthy ✉
Charlie McCarthy, a writer/editor at Newsmax, has nearly 40 years of experience covering news, sports, and politics.
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