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Newly unsealed records<\/span> provide new details about the Trump administration\u2019s failed effort this spring to obtain a search warrant for an Instagram account run by student protesters at Columbia University.<\/p>\n The FBI and federal prosecutors sought a sweeping warrant, the records show<\/a>, that would have identified the people who ran the account along with every user who had interacted with it since January 2024.<\/p>\n Between March 15 and April 14, the FBI and the Department of Justice filed multiple search warrant applications and appeared numerous times before two different judges in Manhattan federal court as part of an investigation into Columbia University Apartheid Divest, or CUAD, a student group. A magistrate judge denied the application three times in March, a decision which a district court judge later affirmed in April.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n \u201cThe government is trying to criminalize constitutionally protected political expression.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n <\/p>\n \u201cThe government is trying to criminalize constitutionally protected political expression associated with the pro-Palestine protest movement,\u201d said Brian Hauss, a senior staff attorney at the American Civil Liberties Union.<\/p>\n It\u2019s rare for judges to deny a search warrant application, civil liberties watchdogs told The Intercept, much less to deny it multiple times.<\/p>\n \u201cIt is unusual for a magistrate judge to reject a search warrant application from the government,\u201d said F. Mario Trujillo, a staff attorney at the Electronic Frontier Foundation, in an emailed statement. \u201cAnd it is even more unusual for the government to try and appeal that decision to a district court judge, who again rejected it. That speaks to the lack probable cause in the warrant application.\u201d<\/p>\n The records \u2014 which include transcripts of hearings with the judges as well as the government\u2019s filings \u2014 provide a rare blow-by-blow of the search warrant application process, which, in line with normal procedure, was initially conducted under seal. The materials were unsealed on Tuesday as part of a court action<\/a> originally filed by the New York Times in May, which The Intercept supported<\/a>.<\/p>\n Columbia University declined to comment for this story and CUAD did not immediately respond to an inquiry.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n The government first sought a search warrant on March 15, the records show. The Times previously reported<\/a> that the Department of Justice sought the search warrant after a top official, Emil Bove<\/a>, ordered the department\u2019s civil rights division to find a list of CUAD\u2019s members.<\/p>\n For a month, the government argued to judges that a March 14 post on Instagram from @cuapartheiddivest \u2014 the group was banned from Instagram<\/a> in late March for violating community standards \u2014 was a \u201ctrue threat\u201d against the university\u2019s then-interim president Katrina Armstrong in violation of federal law<\/a>. The post referred to the university\u2019s use<\/a> of the New York Police Department to break up<\/a> campus demonstrations<\/a> and the targeting of student activists by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement.<\/p>\n \u201cThe people will not stand for Columbia University\u2019s shameless complicity in genocide!\u201d reads the post, in part, next to a photo of graffiti spray-painted onto a Manhattan mansion used as the president\u2019s housing at Columbia. \u201cThe University\u2019s repression has only bred more resistance and Columbia has lit a flame it can\u2019t control. Katrina Armstrong you will not be allowed peace as you sic NYPD officers and ICE agents on your own students for opposing the genocide of the Palestinian people.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cFREE THEM ALL\u201d reads the graffiti in the photo, alongside an inverted triangle, a much-disputed symbol<\/a> that pro-Palestine protesters in the U.S. and around the world<\/a> have used. Hamas, the militant group that ruled the occupied Gaza Strip, has also used the inverted triangle to identify bombing targets, the FBI agent \u2014 whose name was redacted \u2014 wrote in an affidavit<\/a> accompanying the search warrant application.<\/p>\n The FBI agent wrote that the photograph of the graffiti and message in the Instagram post were sufficient probable cause of an \u201cinterstate communication of a threat to injure, in violation of\u201d the law<\/a>.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n
\n Source: Court filing<\/span>
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