Aug. 17, 2023 - Epoch Times
07:47
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| Good evening, and right before we dive into these unsealed January 6 court documents, I'd like to quickly mention that we here at the Epoch Times, we were fortunate enough to recently be given access to tens of thousands of hours of January 6 footage from Capitol Hill. | |
| Basically, we were given access to over 1,700 different camera angles and over 40,000 hours of video. | |
| Our team has been going through these videos over at an undisclosed location in order to answer some of the many questions which still linger about that fateful day. | |
| And we just released an hour-long special report called the January 6th Tapes, going through and dissecting what we were able to find. | |
| If you'd like to check out that awesome special report, I'll throw the link to it. | |
| It'll be right there at the very top of the description box below. | |
| I hope you check it out. | |
| And diving into today's main story, this right here is Mr. | |
| Jack Smith, the special counsel leading the charge in both of the federal cases lobbied against President Trump. | |
| And according to a recently unsealed court document, Jack Smith has been forcing Twitter to hand over a treasure trove of data on President Trump's account in relation to the January 6th indictment. | |
| And the type of data that was handed over is staggering, especially when you consider that Donald Trump was the commander-in-chief during this period of time. | |
| Things such as President Trump's direct messages, his deleted messages, posts that were drafted but never made public, and even the location information of all the users who posted to the account. | |
| All that was handed over. | |
| Now, the unsealed court document that you can see up on your screen there was the transcript from a closed-door court hearing. | |
| Essentially, what happened was that Jack Smith and his team of federal prosecutors, they filed a warrant against Twitter, ordering them to hand over all of President Trump's personal data that was on the back end of his Twitter account. | |
| That warrant was then signed off by U.S. District Judge Beryl Howell, who, free reference, was appointed to the bench by Barack Obama. | |
| Also, it's worth mentioning that alongside the warrant, this judge also issued a non-disclosure order, meaning that Twitter was not only to hand over all the data, but they must do it without informing President Trump or his legal team. | |
| However, Twitter challenged both. | |
| They challenged the warrant as well as the associated gag order, saying that the warrant was based on insufficient evidence and that the gag order stifled their constitutional rights to free speech. | |
| But wouldn't you know it? | |
| Not only did Judge Howell uphold both of these two orders, she also sanctioned Twitter for not providing the data in a timely enough matter. | |
| Now, Twitter, for their part, appealed that decision, but the appeals court ruled against them. | |
| And indeed, what's interesting is that the warrant itself was included in this treasure trove of unsealed documents. | |
| You can see it up on screen for yourself. | |
| And it allows Jack Smith and his team of prosecutors access to an extensive amount of data from Twitter, including all the records from October of 2020 all the way up to January of 2021 of composed posts, whether they remained in draft form or not, all direct messages that were sent, that were received or that were drafted, all devices that were used to access the account, any and all credit that were received or that were drafted, all devices that were used to access the account, any and all credit cards and bank account | |
| Now, just to give you an idea of the level of sophistication we're dealing with here in what's probably, you can say, the case of the century, here it was a short exchange wherein a lawyer for Twitter explains why they don't have access to President Trump's bank account information to the judge. | |
| This exchange took place in a closed-door court hearing, and the transcript of it was recently unsealed. | |
| So this is how it goes. | |
| The Twitter lawyer says, Judge Howell responds by saying this, Really? | |
| That is amazing. | |
| Furthermore, in regards to the gag order, the federal prosecutors argued that it was necessary in order to keep this warrant a secret. | |
| The secrecy, they said, would, quote, help make sure a grand jury considering charges against President Trump would be able to freely deliberate and prevent efforts to tamper with witnesses. | |
| However, on the flip side, in their filings, the Twitter lawyers argue that this non-disclosure agreement was for one, violating their constitutional First Amendment rights, and second of all, it violated the Twitter Terms of Service, which tells users that they will be notified of any disclosures of their private account information. | |
| Here is specifically the argument that Twitter was making in their court filings. | |
| Quote, Furthermore, the lawyers for Twitter also made the argument that by informing President Trump of this warrant, the lawyers for Twitter also made the argument that by informing President Trump of this warrant, it would allow his legal team the opportunity to address some of the legal issues surrounding a demand Here's what they wrote. | |
| Quote, Essentially, under the new leadership of Elon Musk, this Twitter lawyer was calling for full transparency. | |
| However, the officials representing the government in this case, they made the counter-argument that, quote, And then lastly, Judge Howell, who appeared to be on the side of the prosecutors in this point, she badgered the Twitter lawyers regarding their true motivations for challenging the gag order. | |
| Here's how that particular exchange went in the closed-door hearing. | |
| Quote, And so, | |
| with all that being said, the appeal ultimately fell through, and Twitter has been ordered to hand over all of President Trump's back-end Twitter data over to the federal government. | |
| And besides everything that we've listed thus far, Twitter has also been ordered to hand over a list of users that President Trump has followed and blocked, all the users who either liked and or shared the President's posts, as well as all the searches that President Trump has performed from October of 2020 all the way up to January of 2021. | |
| Meaning, in practical terms, that if you, whoever you are watching this episode, if you interacted with President Trump's Twitter account before he got kicked off, well, your name is literally going on a list. | |
| If you'd like to comb through any of the pages from this recent batch of unsealed documents, I'll throw the link to them. | |
| They'll be down in the description box below this video for you to peruse at your own leisure, which I should mention is that description box right below those like and subscribe buttons, both of which I hope you take a moment to smash so this episode can reach ever more people via the YouTube algorithm. | |
| And now lastly, as I mentioned at the top of the episode as well, we here at the Epoch Times were recently given access to quite literally tens of thousands of hours of footage from Capitol Hill as it relates to January 6th. | |
| Basically, we're given access to over 1,700 different camera angles and over 40,000 hours of footage. | |
| Our team has been able to go through these videos at an undisclosed location In order to answer some of the, you can say, pressing questions which still remain unanswered about that fateful day. | |
| And, just three days ago, we released our findings in an hour-long special report called the January 6th Tapes. | |
| I'll throw a link to that awesome report. | |
| It'll be right there at the very top of the description box below. | |
| For obvious reasons, we cannot post it here on this platform, but we can do it over on Epic TV, our no-censorship video platform. | |
| If you'd like to check out that special report, again, that link is right there at the top of the description box below. | |
| Just click on that link, and you can head on over and watch it right away. | |
| And until next time, I'm your host, Roman from the Epoch Times. |
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