In deleted tweets, Trump’s incoming AI and crypto czar argued Trump Jan. 6 rhetoric not covered by First Amendment

By Andrew Kaczynski, CNN

(CNN) — Tech-entrepreneur David Sacks, the incoming White House czar for AI and cryptocurrency, has a reputation for staunchly defending online free speech, including when he criticized tech companies for silencing conservative voices in the run-up to the January 6, 2021, attack on the US Capitol.

But there’s one person whose words Sacks didn’t feel qualified for free speech protection on January 6 – Donald Trump.

In a series of now-deleted tweets from January 2021, Sacks called Trump’s rhetoric leading up to the Capitol riot an incitement to violence that exceeded First Amendment protections – even as he argued against broad social media moderation for most content.

“Speech can be regulated under the First Amendment in ways that would have taken down the most incendiary tweets of Trump and the other rabble-rousers,” Sacks wrote in a since-deleted tweet from January 11, 2021

“What happened at Capitol was an outrage. Incitement is not 1A protected,” Sacks tweeted on January 15, 2021.

Sacks also co-hosts the popular “All-In Podcast,” where he discusses issues ranging from venture capital to national politics.  In one episode in the days following the riot, he suggested Trump would be prosecuted for his actions.

“What Trump did was absolutely outrageous,” Sacks said on the podcast that also criticized tech censorship. “And I think it brought him to an ignominious end in American politics. He will pay for it in the history books, if not in a court of law.”

CNN’s KFile counted at least 20 tweets from Sacks – mostly criticisms of Trump from 2021 – that have since been deleted, including one mocking Trump and praising his then-presidential rival Ron DeSantis that was deleted by June 2023.

Among other deleted tweets were those that criticized people who refused to wear masks during the Covid-19 pandemic, including one from April 2021 linked to a since-deleted blog post where Sacks said in April 2020 that mask wearing should be mandated by law.

But the majority of deleted tweets from Sacks focused on the January 6 riot. Several refered to the riot at the Capitol as an “insurrection.” Another took aim at Trump’s false election rhetoric.

“When a party loses an election, it needs to look in the mirror and ask what it did wrong. Trump failed to do that in 2020,” Sacks wrote on January 9, 2021, in a since-deleted tweet. “Many Democrats failed to do that in 2016. It’s always easier to invent conspiracy theories than to accept defeat. We shouldn’t let them get away w/ that.”

“Do I approve of what Trump did in the Capitol this week? Absolutely not,” Sacks wrote in another from January 9, 2021.

Sacks has since changed his tone about January 6, including in July when he dismissed it as a “fake coup” as part of comments in which he attacked Democrats. Those tweets remain active and undeleted on his account.

In a statement to CNN, Sacks defended his past criticisms of Trump, arguing that they were based on incomplete information available at the time. Sacks also repeated claims about January 6 that have been proven false, saying his views evolved as new facts emerged and alleging that the media, Democrats, and Big Tech manipulated the narrative to discredit Trump.

“January 6 was a psyop designed to make President Trump look bad,” he told CNN in a statement. “As I learned the truth, I updated my views and my X account. Apparently CNN thinks it’s a scandal that I temporarily believed some of their fake news…”

A Silicon Valley power player, Sacks has long been a public figure in the tech world. An early executive at PayPal and a member of the so-called “PayPal Mafia” alongside billionaires such as Elon Musk and Peter Thiel, Sacks is part of a wing of Silicon Valley that has increasingly aligned itself with Trump and the MAGA movement.

The exact scope of Sacks’ advisory position in the Trump White House is unclear and the position is not subject to Senate confirmation.

A known ally of the cryptocurrency and AI industries, Sacks has been a critic of the Biden administration’s tech oversight policies and is expected to push for less restrictive federal regulations on the rapidly growing sectors.

Sacks’ more recent foray into tweeting about politics has been defined by his advocacy for online free speech, a cause Trump has also embraced.

In announcing Sacks’ appointment on Truth Social in December, Trump said Sacks “will safeguard Free Speech online and steer us away from Big Tech bias and censorship.”

In recent years, social media companies have shifted from third-party content moderation to user-driven fact-checking. Elon Musk’s X (formerly Twitter) introduced crowd-sourced “community notes” to provide context to posts, and last Tuesday, Meta announced it will replace its fact-checking program on Facebook and Instagram with a similar system.

Sacks isn’t the only convert who Trump has hired during his return to power. Vice President-elect JD Vance was himself once a vocal critical of Trump. But Sacks’ deleted tweets reveal a more complex and critical stance on Trump and the January 6 riot.

Sacks in many tweets had singled-out tech companies after the riot for removing Parler – an alternative conservative social media platform heavily used by Trump supporters involved in the riot – calling it a dangerous overreach of power by “Big Tech” that stifled free speech and set a troubling precedent for censorship.

Yet even his calls against social media moderation often took aim at Trump and those who participated in the riot.

“The ‘need to protect democracy against disinformation’ argument for heavy-handed social media ‘moderation’ seems to ignore that Trump is the first president since Herbert Hoover to lose the presidency, House, and Senate for his party. Voters seem to be figuring it out,” he wrote on January 10 , 2021.

Another from January 10 read, “plotting a coup by tweet, if that were one’s intention, is an epically stupid idea. It makes it easy to anticipate, stop, and prosecute. Just from a tactical standpoint, driving such conversations underground seems like a bad idea.”

A day later, Sacks argued for prosecuting those who broke into the Capitol.

“The Storming of the Capitol was an outrage, my friend, but it wasn’t Fort Sumter and we’re not in a war. Let’s round up and prosecute the idiots who did this. Allowing them to incriminate themselves on social media aids that effort,” Sacks wrote.

Sacks’ views on the day were best summarized in another since-removed post from January 8, 2021.

“This is the week that both Trump and Big Tech proved their critics correct.”

Sacks’ criticism of Trump may have been a factor in his move into public support for one of his main rivals.

In 2021 Sacks hosted a fundraiser for DeSantis and in 2022 he donated more than $1 million to Republicans, according to Federal Election Commission records. When backing DeSantis’ 2024 White House run, Sacks hosted the governor’s glitch-ridden campaign launch on Twitter Spaces alongside Musk.

Following the primary, Sacks endorsed Trump in a 1,300-word post on X, co-hosted a fundraiser for Trump at his San Francisco home, and spoke at the Republican National Convention.

The-CNN-Wire
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