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

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.