1 yr. ago • 96%

Elon Musk's Twitter was fined $350,000 for snubbing the special counsel investigating Donald Trump

fortune.com Elon Musk's Twitter was fined $350,000 for snubbing the special counsel investigating Donald Trump

Special counsel Jack Smith's team obtained a search warrant in January for records related to former President Donald Trump's Twitter account.

Special counsel Jack Smith’s team obtained a search warrant in January for records related to former President Donald Trump’s Twitter account, and a judge levied a $350,000 fine on the company for missing the deadline to comply, according to court documents released Wednesday.

36 comments

Important to note that these fines were to enforce compliance, and they worked.

Twitter finally fulfilled their legal obligation before the cost really balooned, which was the entire point of the fine.

69
- Thanks for actually providing some context.
  
  12
  
  Some more for ya: The fine started as a 50k fine, but then doubled every day it wasn’t paid. So it only took them a few days to actually pay it to stop the fines.
  
  14
That's 0.0008% of what he paid for Twitter, that'll show him!

56
- Especially because he's just not gonna pay it
  
  13
  
  And then suffer 0 consequences because our legal system is petrified of the wealthy.
  
  17
A reminder that fines are a poor person's tax unless the percentage is tacked to the person's income.

40
- Iirc this fine started at $50k and each day of noncompliance. Another fine 2x the size of the prior days fine was added.
  
  So noncompliance for another day would have cost another $400k, then $800k, then $1.6m, and so on. By day 30 of noncompliance, the fine would be over $5 billion.
  
  6
- Honestly all fines should be a percent of net worth with a minimum amount.
  
  4
  
  Why the minimum amount?
  
  If a homeless person on the street is fined 100€, they won't be able to afford it.
  
  No, just keep it a percentage and keep it simple, or loopholes will be found.
  
  3
DMX was wrong, X ISN'T going to give it to ya.

32
This is essentially $350,000 that Elon is paying to stay in the daily news cycle.

Stop upvoting Elon garbage and doing the billionaire's work for him.

17
A drop in the ocean.

13
- It was 50k doubling each day. So 50k + 100k + 200k for 3 days, if they had let it keep going it would of hurt a lot. This type of fine works.
  
  At 10 days would be 51 million, after 20 would be 52 billion dollars. So, they have a compelling reason to comply with haste.
  
  17
This is the reason there are legal compliance officers in communication companies. Elmo fired his. Good that they compiled before the penalties started to escalate.

9
Uhhhhhhhh subpeona followed by arrest warrant after failure to comply with subpoena?

7
Gotta pump those numbers up. Those are rookie numbers in this racket

6
ohnoooes he has to pay a small fee to keep being a shithhhead

5
- Umm, no X paid way too small of a fine, AND still had to comply with the court's order. Could have done it without the hassle, but chose to cost X's bottom line.
  
  8
  
  But Elon probably routinely has lost that much most times he's posted dumb stuff on Twitter himself. Hard to meaningfully fine a multi billionaire. But apparently he caved before the government got to really trying.
  
  2
Running the business you bought for $44,000,000,000 into the ground to own the libs.

4
- Elon is worth over $200B. He has many people on his team that advise him about his wealth and growing it. It's highly unlikely he bumbled his way into $22B of Saudi Arabian money, accidentally withdrew another $22B from his chequing account, accidentally fired over half of the staff at twitter, accidentally changed the name to the asinine "X", and accidentally made the company hemorrhage valuation. It was a calculated move. The only thing he wasn't prepared for was the price tag because he couldn't stop running his mouth. SA invested $22B into the acquisition because they wanted Musk to destroy the platform. Arab Spring and all that. Do you think that SA invested that kind of money directly because they thought they would see ROI? Hardly.
  
  4
  
  IDK, seems like you're giving him too much credit but that does sound pretty plausible. Would be pretty short-sighted of SA though, it's not like people can't use other apps.
  
  3
350k is peanuts for Elon

3
Those DMs must be juicy for Musk to obviously stall for time in order to delete them from the servers.

3

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