Judge Accused Elon Musk Of 'Cozying Up' To Trump By Resisting Court Order

The judge that ultimately forced Elon Musk to turn over access to Donald Trump's Twitter account earlier this year accused Musk of trying to "cozy up" to Trump by resisting the court order. Musk's team had used a variety of different defenses to not only prevent access, but also to claim that they had to alert Trump to what was happening, all of which were smacked down by the courts for being ridiculous. Ring of Fire's Farron Cousins discusses what happened.

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*This transcript was generated by a third-party transcription software company, so please excuse any typos.

So, as I'm sure everybody knows by now, uh, Jack Smith, the special prosecutor earlier this year, actually got his hands on Donald Trump's Twitter account, which is now the platform firm, formerly known as Twitter, now called X. But back then it was Twitter. So we're gonna call it Twitter for purposes of this story. But according to the court ruling, which has now been unsealed, the judge actually accused Elon Musk, who owned Twitter earlier this year, obviously still owns it today, but, uh, accused Elon Musk of trying to cozy up to Donald Trump by not only resisting the warrant for Donald Trump's social media, but also by trying to warn Donald Trump that the feds were gonna get their hands on your account. Now, Elon Musk, as far as we know, did not end up warning Donald Trump. He wanted to, his lawyers tried to make the argument in court that we need to, and the judge basically says, um, well, judge Beryl Howell questioned whether the hope of informing Trump about the search warrant was an attempt by the platform's owner, Elon Musk, to quote cozy up to the former president who has not returned to posting on his formerly beloved social media site, despite having his count reinstated last November.

So maybe Elon Musk was thinking, Hey, look, if I warn Trump that the Feds are coming after you, maybe he'll get back on Twitter and that'll draw more people back in. But the court wasn't having it, and the court understood exactly what Elon Musk was trying to do. That's why the judge smacked it down. And that is why Elon Musk, of course, had to comply with that order after resisting it for several days and being fined $350,000 for refusing to comply with the court order initially. Here's the thing, we do not yet know what exactly Jack Smith was looking for. We do know that the judge had ruled there was in fact, probable cause to grant this warrant, which means they were able to show enough evidence to suggest there was probably a crime committed with Trump's Twitter account. So obviously, we're talking about stuff that may or may not have been published, likely something in the dms, possibly something in his draft folder, you know, tweets he typed out but didn't send. We're not gonna know all that, of course, until we get to trial. But according to legal experts, Jack Smith did in fact use the information obtained from the Twitter feed, uh, or the Twitter account, excuse me, to indict Donald Trump. But another thing I wanna talk about for a moment is the idiotic arguments that Twitter's lawyers used, like the people Elon Musk hired, went to court and argued two things as to why they shouldn't comply with the search warrant. First was, we don't wanna violate Donald Trump's right to freedom of speech.

You, you're not a government entity. I know Elon Musk likes to say he's sorry I'm a free speech warrior

In the way he runs. X is clearly indication that he is not, but dumb asses need to understand something about freedom of speech. The First Amendment only covers the government not censoring what you say. And it is a very important, right? And we need to be careful because there have been plenty of instances with both the former administration and the current one where they have attempted to limit our freedom of speech that is dangerous. We don't want that. Twitter is not the government. They cannot violate your right to freedom of speech because they're not the ones guaranteeing you that.