'Paper trail': Ex-prosecutor shows why Trump may have used Twitter DMs but not texts
Donald Trump is known for never leaving a "paper trail" in the form of texts or emails, but he may have used Twitter DMs because he thought they couldn't be accessed, according to a former prosecutor.
Former U.S. attorney Joyce Vance, who spent 20 years as a federal prosecutor, appeared on The 11th Hour with Stephanie Ruhle on Wednesday, and was asked about how Special Counsel Jack Smith was reportedly looking into the former president's direct messages from his now-abandoned social media account.
"Joyce, these direct messages, doesn't it seem out of character for Donald Trump?" the host asked. "He is very well known, he does not use email, he does not text, he does not like to sign his name. Very well known for no paper trail. Did Donald Trump fall into the trap that the rest of us do? Which is sloppy texting?"
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Vance responded, "It is intriguing, because trump notoriously doesn't text. He knows not believe a paper trail. Trump and his employees have articulated that he does not do that. Likely, what happened here, it did not occur to him that there might come a time where the Justice Department would be able to access his account here, and see what was going on behind the scenes on his Twitter account."
She added that "this is something prosecutors do for instance when they access email accounts. You can look at drafts, interactions between people, in this case with Trump, you can see if it was actually Trump who logged in, or someone else. You can determine that from geolocation. So a lot of really fascinating evidence, information that the former president left behind, and is likely simply because he failed to realize the government could ultimately access it."