Hi everyone, it is 4 o'clock in New York, I'm Alicia Menendez in for Nicole Wallace.

We are learning about two new major building blocks of special counsel Jack Smith's case

against Donald Trump for his efforts to overturn the 2020 election.

The first court documents unsealed just hours ago reveal that Jack Smith sought a search

warrant for Trump's Twitter account.

The warrant was obtained back in January of this year, months before a federal grand jury

handed down an indictment of Donald Trump.

An appeals court opinion, releasing the warrant states, quote,

the district court found probable cause to search the Twitter account for evidence

of criminal offenses.

Turns out the Twitter, and Jack Smith squared off on whether Trump should be told about

the search warrant, with the federal court ultimately ruling in favor of keeping the

warrant a secret from Trump.

The opinion unsealed today says that quote, the district court found that there was reasonable

grounds to believe that disclosing the warrant to former president Trump would seriously

jeopardize the ongoing investigation by giving him an opportunity to destroy evidence, change

patterns of behavior, or notify confederates.

It's hard to remember now given that the ex-president was banned from Twitter for years

and has not posted since his return, but his Twitter account was one of the most powerful

weapons in Trump's arsenal in the aftermath of the 2020 election.

He'll recall he used it to spread baseless conspiracy theories about the vote count to his

millions of followers, and he urged his supporters to gather in Washington on the 6th.

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