The FBI Sought Search Warrants For Columbia Students' Social Media

 New court documents reveal how the feds tried to unmask the Columbia students — and got blocked by federal judges on First Amendment grounds.

By Shawn Musgrave, The Intercept

Newly unsealed records provide new details about the Trump administration’s failed effort this spring to obtain a search warrant for an Instagram account run by student protesters at Columbia University.

The FBI and federal prosecutors sought a sweeping warrant, the records show, that would have identified the people who ran the account along with every user who had interacted with it since January 2024.

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.

“The government is trying to criminalize constitutionally protected political expression associated with the pro-Palestine protest movement,” said Brian Hauss, a senior staff attorney at the American Civil Liberties Union.

It’s rare for judges to deny a search warrant application, civil liberties watchdogs told The Intercept, much less to deny it multiple times.

“It is unusual for a magistrate judge to reject a search warrant application from the government,” said F. Mario Trujillo, a staff attorney at the Electronic Frontier Foundation, in an emailed statement. “And 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.”

The records — which include transcripts of hearings with the judges as well as the government’s filings — 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 originally filed by the New York Times in May, which The Intercept supported.