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WASHINGTON President Trump’s Justice Department secretly secured a grand jury subpoena last year to attempt to identify the person behind a Twitter account dedicated to the mockery of California Representative Devin Nunes, a court document shows recently unsealed.
But Twitter fought the subpoena, as well as an associated gag order barring the company from speaking publicly. Twitter executives have expressed skepticism about whether the Justice Department could abuse federal criminal law enforcement power to retaliate against a critic of Mr. Nunes, a Republican who is a close ally of Mr. Trump, in violation of the First Amendment.
Ultimately, according to a person familiar with the matter, the Justice Department withdrew the subpoena this spring, after President Biden took office.
What happened behind the summons remains obscure. The filing of a motion to remove the subpoena and lift the gagging order that Twitter filed in March shows that the Department of Justice sent the company a request on November 24 to provide identifying information about the user @NunesAlt.
Twitter appears to have been immediately suspicious of the legitimacy of the request. The user of this account, according to the file, appears to be engaged in clear First Amendment activity, discussing positions on current events, government policies, and one elected in particular Congressman Nunes.
The file provided examples of some of the accounts tweets, such as a photograph of Mr. Nunes with text superimposed on his face: Believe in conspiracy theories. Even though there is no proof.
As chairman of the House Intelligence Committee until Democrats took control of the chamber after the 2018 midterm elections, Mr Nunes used his position to present claims that supported the Mr. Trump’s claim that the Russia investigation was a deep state conspiracy against him.
The Twitters filing also noted that Mr Nunes and his attorney separately filed a series of lawsuits in an attempt to unmask pseudonymous social media users who criticized him, including an account that claimed to be the Congress Cow and the account @NunesAlt.
When Twitter demanded an explanation from the Justice Department, according to the file, the government said the subpoena was part of a criminal investigation into a possible violation of a federal law that qualifies it as a crime to use interstate communications. to threaten to hurt someone. But the government declined to report a particular tweet that posed a threat.
The company’s file asked the judge handling the case to examine the basis of the Justice Department’s motives for suing the user.
As the custodian of private identifying information sought by the government, Twitter is concerned that the subpoena may not be supported by a legitimate law enforcement objective and therefore may not be necessary, let alone compelling, which the government unveils the user, wrote a Twitter lawyer in the court petition.
He continued: As such, Twitter is asking the court to conduct a thorough analysis of the government basis for issuing the subpoena to determine whether the subpoena violates the First Amendment and should be rescinded.
The summons to appear before the grand jury had been obtained by the United States attorney’s office for the District of Columbia. At the time, the office was headed on an interim basis by Michael R. Sherwin, who had been installed by Attorney General William P. Barr.
A spokeswoman for that office did not respond to a request for comment or explanation, including whether the underlying investigation remained open. The text of the summons, which was attached to Twitter’s court file, suggested the investigation was being conducted by Capitol Police, who protect members of Congress.
A spokesperson for Mr Nunes did not respond to a request for comment.
The person who manages the @NunesAlt account appeared to be surprised by the deposit, writing in a Monday afternoon post that there was nothing noteworthy about me and adding: So why am I being sued by a member of the US Congress? Why would the DOJ ever target me? Is it the mean tweets and the bad memes?
Twitter said in a statement that it is committed to protecting the freedom of expression of those who use our service. We have extensive experience and take seriously the trust placed in us to work to protect the privacy of individuals on Twitter.
Kate Conger, Katie Benner and Nicholas Fandos contributed reporting. Seamus Hughes contributed to the research.
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