I have now figured out the timeline and details for the Twitter contempt saga. Here it is:
January 17: Special counsel Jack Smith gets a warrant ordering Twitter to turn over all records for Donald Trump's account. Marcy Wheeler guesses that it's because Smith is trying to figure out which January 6 tweets Trump himself wrote. The warrant includes a nondisclosure order forbidding Twitter to tell anyone about it for 180 days.
January 27: Twitter says the records are available but misses the first deadline to turn them over.
February 1: Twitter raises a legal objection.
February 2: It turns out Twitter is not objecting to the warrant but to the nondisclosure order. It's not clear why, since nondisclosures are fairly common and are routinely upheld in court.
February 7: Judge rules against Twitter. However, Twitter fails to turn over the records by 5 pm and is fined $50,000 for contempt.
February 8: Twitter is fined $100,000.
February 9: Twitter is fined $200,000. They finally turn over Trump's account data at 8:06 pm. The total fine for contempt is $350,000.
March 3: The district court formally denies Twitter's motion to vacate the nondisclosure and upholds the contempt fine.
March 4: Twitter appeals.
June 20: At the request of the special counsel, the nondisclosure order is partially withdrawn.
July 18: The appellate court rules against Twitter, upholding both the contempt order and the fine:
Civil-contempt sanctions..."must be calibrated to coerce compliance."...While a geometric schedule is unusual and generally would be improper without an upper limit on the daily fine, we nonetheless uphold the district court's sanctions order based on the particular facts of this case. (a) Twitter never raised any objection to the sanctions formula, despite having several opportunities to do so....(b) Moreover, the $350,000 sanction ultimately imposed was not unreasonable, given Twitter's $40-billion valuation and the court's goal of coercing Twitter's compliance....(c) Finally, we note that Twitter assured the court that it would comply with the warrant by 5:00 p.m. on February 7.
....We affirm the district court's rulings in all respects.
Today: The appellate ruling is unsealed and we finally learn all this stuff.
>> It seems kind of excessive, no?<<
No.
Correct. Like writing multiple blog posts about me losing a nickel. Their legal fees on this were vastly more than the fine.
Indeed this was several layers of pure mulish dumbness.
My first check was $27,000. It's my first time winning something and I'm really happy about it. q I will work even harder from now on and can't wait to get paid next week. "a11 For more information, click the Home tab. ..
Use here................. https://richwork24.blogspot.com
Twitter could have complied with the disclosure order while contesting the non-disclosure. The warrant issued Jan. 17. Presuming Twitter was served with it the same day, they had had 21 days to comply and had missed at least two deadlines before contempt fines started to be imposed.
"It's not clear why, "
Free speech absolutism. Duh. The same thing that protects an armed robber as long as he says "Stick 'em up" first.
Yes yes, "slowly but exceeding small" and all. And there is also speculation that the SC is interested in any DMs.
I love the shade the judge throws about a $40 billion valuation (which had evaporated by at least half by the time that ruling was written)
Musk is his own worst enemy.
"Musk is his own worst enemy"
So is Trump. That tells me that, subconsciously, they must hate themselves.
Furthermore, like many RW nutjobs, they have a strong death wish, providing they can take everybody else with them. The thought that other people may be enjoying life (sometimes), and will continue to do so after their own deaths, is just too much for them to bear.
Disclaimer: Don't ask me to prove this in a court of law.
"It's not clear why, since nondisclosures are fairly common and are routinely upheld in court."
Rank speculation, but let's game this out . . . so "Twitter" raises a "legal issue" less than a week after one of the few remaining legal minds at Twitter finally responds to the DOJ's message posted on the legal requests portal. So clearly it reached Elon then. Whereupon he yelled at the legal eagle "WTF? They want to stop me from even *telling* DJT what they're doing? We'll effing well see about *that*! You effing well file an objection posthaste or your ass is grass. In the meantime don't give those SOBs an effing thing."
The root of it being that Musk knows diddly about what his legal obligations are in a situation like this, or how routine this kind of non-disclosure order is in the data-subpoena business, and cares even less. And he's just plunked down 44 billion on his new toy-- 17 or so of it borrowed-- and what's a few hundred thousand after that to save America from the jack-booted tyranny of people in suits and robes yammering on about this "law" crap? I mean, tech bro status has to mean something, amiright?
My guess is they wanted to be the first to tweet it out themselves first re-establishing the company formerly know as twitter as the go to source for instant, not terribly important, "news".
There is a long history of the government forcing internet companies to provide data on users and not tell them. That should flat out be illegal. It's why there are ToS that get changed when they have to turn it over so at least people know when they've lost their info.
Twitter 100% did the right thing in contesting. I think they should have turned over the info and then simply ignored the ND order.