A federal judge has ruled that the Justice Department can continue withholding quarterly FBI payment totals to Twitter, as a watchdog group presses for disclosure tied to past content moderation and investigative activity.
By yourNEWS Media Newsroom
A federal court has upheld the Justice Department’s decision to withhold details about quarterly FBI payments made to Twitter during years marked by heightened government engagement with social media platforms, according to a report by the Daily Caller News Foundation.
In a Feb. 4 ruling, U.S. District Judge James Boasberg determined that the Department of Justice may keep confidential the FBI’s quarterly payment amounts to Twitter for legal process compliance between 2016 and 2023, as reflected in the court’s opinion.
The dispute stems from Freedom of Information Act litigation brought by Judicial Watch, which sued in October 2023 after asserting that the FBI failed to adequately respond to a December 2022 FOIA request seeking records of government payments to Twitter.
Internal communications disclosed in the “Twitter Files” showed that the FBI paid Twitter nearly $3.5 million between October 2019 and February 2021. Journalist Michael Shellenberger revealed the figure in December 2022. The specific scope of services covered by those payments has not been publicly detailed.
Judge Boasberg wrote that the records were created in connection with subpoenas, warrants, and other legal requests issued to Twitter to support federal investigations. “These records were created as part of serving subpoenas, warrants, and other requests on Twitter to retrieve information that would help the FBI investigate crimes and national-security threats,” Boasberg stated in his opinion. He concluded that there was “a rational relationship” between the documents and the FBI’s law enforcement and national security responsibilities.
While Twitter has published semiannual transparency reports disclosing aggregate numbers of legal process requests, the court found that releasing quarterly FBI-specific payment totals could reveal investigative techniques. In a December 2025 filing, the government argued that disclosing payment amounts “will, combined with other publicly available information, provide insights into the FBI’s investigative activities that bad actors would use to evade FBI detection.”
The DOJ further wrote that releasing payment totals “would show how the FBI’s engagement with Twitter has increased or decreased over time.” In a separate July 2025 submission, the department stated it had already released all non-exempt portions of responsive records.
Timothy Lauer, spokesperson for the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the District of Columbia, said in a statement to the DCNF: “As we explain in our brief, disclosing the amount of money that the FBI pays to a social media company would provide insights into the FBI’s engagement with that company.” He added that “bad actors (which could include the common criminal as well as a foreign adversary) could use this information to determine which social media platform they should use to avoid FBI detection or determine whether the FBI has detected their activity. This is the type of information that law enforcement agencies routinely withhold under Exemption 7(E).”
The legal dispute arises against the backdrop of previously disclosed internal platform communications. Documents published as part of the Twitter Files revealed that government officials flagged certain COVID-19-related content for review. Additional reporting showed that State Department officials flagged accounts discussing the lab-leak theory.
Emails reported by journalist Matt Taibbi indicated that Twitter suppressed the Hunter Biden laptop story following FBI warnings about a potential “hack-and-leak” operation ahead of the 2020 election, as reported at the time. Additional disclosures showed the FBI flagged specific posts prior to the election. The Daily Caller News Foundation verified an email from the laptop in 2020.
Judicial Watch President Tom Fitton told the DCNF that the payment totals should be public “given what we know about the FBI’s improper, corrupt and dangerous relationship with Twitter in terms of censorship and the spying on Trump.” He added: “They may not tell us exactly what they were doing, but how much money was being spent in the process, to me, to us, is a public interest. We’re fighting the Trump Justice Department and the Trump FBI for records that could provide some insight into the abuse of Trump.”
The FBI has previously stated that reimbursements to Twitter reflected standard cost recovery for compliance with legal requests. An agency official told Fox News in December 2022 that the payments were reimbursements for “reasonable costs and expenses associated with their response to a legal process … for complying with legal requests, and a standard procedure.”
The ruling is the latest in a series of FOIA-related disputes involving the Justice Department. Judicial Watch has also sued for records tied to Hunter Biden’s laptop and has publicly expressed dissatisfaction with other disclosure efforts, including matters related to the Epstein files.
“We’re asking about issues that are important to the American people,” Fitton said. “And you know, transparency about the worst corruption in American history. I mean, that ought to be at the top of their list.”
For now, the quarterly payment amounts at issue will remain sealed under the court’s ruling, as the broader debate over transparency, national security exemptions and government engagement with social media platforms continues in federal court.
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