Elon Musk’s social media platform X won in a D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals ruling over a gag order that prevented the company from informing the public when it receives government search warrants and subpoenas, the company said Tuesday.
“In a victory for transparency and free speech, the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals has unanimously ruled in X’s favor to limit the U.S. government’s ability to issue gag orders,” X’s Global Government Affairs account announced in a Tuesday post.
“These gag orders prevent X from notifying the public when it receives government search warrants and subpoenas,” X continued in its announcement.
Musk’s social media platform went on to explain that “Last year, X received a subpoena from the federal government demanding the personal information of two former FBI agents, Kyle Seraphin and Garrett O’Doyle.”
“This was accompanied by a gag order requiring X to keep the subpoena secret,” the company continued, adding, “Seraphin and O’Doyle were whistleblowers who had disclosed to Congress that the FBI was improperly targeting certain politically disfavored groups.”
As Breitbart News reported in 2023, one of the leaks published by Seraphin was that the FBI was targeting Catholic groups:
The report, leaked by an FBI whistle-blower, was published this week by Kyle Seraphin, who was a special agent at the bureau for six years before he was indefinitely suspended without pay in June 2022.
In his accompanying article, Seraphin notes that the report proposes that “a preference for the Catholic Mass in Latin instead of the vernacular and a number of more traditional views on other world religions can amount to an ‘adherence to anti-Semitic, anti-immigrant, anti-LGBTQ and white supremacist ideology.’”
“Following their whistleblowing activities, Seraphin and O’Doyle were fired from their jobs and subject to a criminal investigation, suggesting retaliation by the government,” X elaborated.
“Yet when X wanted to transparently disclose the government’s subpoena to the public, it could not do so because the government had obtained a gag order,” the Tesla CEO’s social media platform added.
X explained that it had “challenged the gag order in court, arguing that it violated federal statutes and the First Amendment.”
“The D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals has now vindicated X’s challenge, ruling that the gag order exceeded the government’s authority,” X said, adding that it “welcomes the ruling, which will help ensure transparency and accountability in the U.S. government’s efforts to investigate its citizens.”
Alana Mastrangelo is a reporter for Breitbart News. You can follow her on Facebook and X at @ARmastrangelo, and on Instagram.
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