Donald Trump's legal team is calling on the Facebook account info of thousands of users who are considered "anti-Trump." Despite the push by the president, the American Civil Liberties Union is pushing back
Trump's warning
The 2016 presidential election will go down as one of the most controversial and unique in American history One reason why this past election will stand out is due to the impact social media had on the American people, as well as the overall outcome. Following Donald Trump's historic and shocking upset win over Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton, multiple reports found that Russian hackers attempted to sway the election in favor of the billionaire real estate mogul.
The Democratic National Committee was hacked first, as hackers gathered emails from Clinton campaign chair John Podesta. Since that time, additional information has been released, which revealed Russian hackers had purchased ads on several social media platforms, including Facebook, where they acted as left-wing groups in an attempt to drive a wedge through the Democratic Party. Earlier this week, Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg handed over information pertaining to the ads that were purchased by the Russians to Congress, which led to the president claiming that Facebook was in possible "collusion" with the media. Fast forward to September 29 and CNN reports that the president's lawyers have obtained three separate search warrants to gather information of multiple anti-Trump Facebook accounts.
Trump administration lawyers are demanding Facebook account info of "anti-administration activists," documents show https://t.co/45hprHB65r pic.twitter.com/FdKHMP86z0
— CNN (@CNN) September 29, 2017
According to CNN late Thursday night, the Donald Trump administration has taken legal action to obtain warrants that will allow them to receive private information about Facebook pages that are run by anti-Trump activists and protesters.
The three personal accounts that have been targeted by the search warrants ran several anti-Trump Facebook pages, which would allow the administration to obtain information on "about 6,000 individuals who 'liked' an anti- Trump Facebook page."
One of the pages in question was titled "disruptj20," which helped run several protests that took place during Donald Trump's inauguration.
The user behind the page, Emmelia Talarico, warned that if the administration obtained her information that they would be able to access thousands of other users who took part in her page. In response, the ACLU acted quickly in an attempt to push back at the request.
Next up
With the ACLU filing a motion to prevent the warrants from sticking and moving forward, only time will tell what happens in the future. Donald Trump's war against the press has been well-documented, but this is the first time the president and his legal team have taken steps to directly target critics on social media.
