A coalition of media organizations, including CNN, is asking the federal court in Washington, DC, to give more transparency into the legal fight over a search warrant special counsel Jack Smith obtained for materials from former President Donald Trump’s Twitter account.
The news outlets are asking for the court to unseal the materials that prosecutors filed when applying in January for the warrant, which was sought as part of Smith’s 2020 election subversion investigation.
Twitter – which has since been rebranded as X – did not object to the warrant itself, according filings from appeals court proceedings in the dispute that were unsealed earlier this month, but fought against an order barring the platform from telling Trump about the warrant.
The new request from the media organizations is also seeking for the unsealing underlying docket in the district court case – which remains inaccessible to the public – and for the release of court filings or orders that sought for or permitted for the case to be sealed, as well as “all other judicial records, including any audio recordings of any hearings, as to which there is no longer a compelling need for secrecy.”
“The First Amendment and common law rights of access to court records are ‘a fundamental element of the rule of law, important to maintaining the integrity and legitimacy of an independent Judicial Branch,’” the media outlets wrote in their new filing, while quoting from a DC Circuit opinion written by then-Circuit Judge Merrick Garland. “Nowhere is the maintenance of integrity and legitimacy more important than in a case like this one, involving the historic and closely-watched investigation of a former President.”
The Justice Department opposes the unsealing request, the media organizations said in the new court filings.
The warrant, and the legal fight that…
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