Supporters of former President Donald Trump are outraged after learning that the federal government may know whether they liked any of the former president’s tweets, despite that information being public.
The uproar began this week after the former president’s fans began discussing several redacted documents from the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) outlining the search warrant for Trump’s account on Twitter, now known as X, that were released on Monday. The warrant is linked to special counsel Jack Smith’s investigation into the Jan. 6, 2021 Capitol riot and efforts to overturn the 2020 election.
A section of the warrant notes that the DOJ sought “all lists of Twitter users who have favorited or retweeted tweets posted by the account” as well as all mentions and replies that contained Trump’s username, asking for essentially anything from Trump’s notifications tab.
The warrant was immediately decried as overly broad and dystopian by Trump fans online, including Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga).
“It truly is a war on Trump, and also anyone who supports Trump,” she wrote. “Republicans must recognize the extreme nature of the politically weaponized DOJ and do everything we can to stop it!”
Sean David, the founder of the web magazine known as the Federalist, argued that the list would be used by the DOJ to target Trump supporters with an unprecedented campaign of harassment and intimidation.
“Biden’s DOJ is doing what all terrorist operations do: deliberately targeting innocent people for the sole purpose of terrorizing them into doing what the terrorist organization wants,” David said. “DOJ and FBI are domestic terrorist organizations.”
It remains unclear how exactly the federal government will blackmail millions of people for simply liking a post from Trump.
The popular account End Wokeness suggested that the warrant was akin to a declaration of war against the public.
“The DOJ collected data on every person who liked/retweeted @realDonaldTrump,” the account wrote. “The War On Terror now means YOU.”
Those in the comments were equally outraged and proclaimed that it had become “illegal” to be a conservative.
“What’s it going to take for the majority of this country to wake up and realize how terrifying this is?” one user added.
Others blamed the media and argued that the story had been purposely ignored.
Major media outlets did cover the revelation about the warrant for Trump’s Twitter data in August. However, it appears that the news about likes and retweets was previously unknown. It’s unclear if Twitter complied with that part of the warrant, given each one of Trump’s tweets garnered millions of shares.
“For some reason, the pro-Trump crowd has only just discovered tonight the search warrant for Trump’s Twitter account that was publicly unsealed (and extensively reported about) in August,”
Now the MAGA crowd claims they would likely find themselves in the crosshairs of the federal government in no time.
“Should I turn myself in tonight?” another one.
