Supreme Court to Hear Ex-Twitter Employee’s Saudi Spying Case

The US Supreme Court will decide whether the government made missteps when charging a former Twitter employee convicted of spying for Saudi Arabia.

On Friday, the justices agreed to hear Ahmad Abouammo’s argument that the Justice Department chose the wrong venue to charge him with obstructing an FBI investigation.

Abouammo was convicted in 2022 of turning over personal information about Saudi dissidents to the country’s royal family.

Abouammo was sentenced to more than three years in prison. The US Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit upheld his conviction last year but ordered a district judge to reconsider his sentence.

His attorney, Tobias S. Loss-Eaton of Sidley Austin, argued the Ninth Circuit was wrong when it allowed Abouammo’s conviction to stand.

Abouammo was charged initially with obstruction in the Northern District of California—where Twitter, now X, was headquartered at the time. Prosecutors said Abouammo sent a falsified document to FBI agents during an interview at his home in Seattle.

Abouammo’s attorneys argued bringing the charge in California violated the US Constitution’s venue clauses. The Ninth Circuit found either venue, Washington or California, would’ve been appropriate because the falsified document was received by FBI agents working out of the San Francisco field office.

The justices declined Friday to hear a separate question posed by Abouammo asking whether the government unlawfully extended the statute of limitations to indict him by filing an information charging a felony while grand jury proceedings were suspended during the pandemic.

The US Solicitor General’s Office opposed Abouammo’s petition, saying no other circuit had disagreed with the Ninth’s venue rationale for obstruction charges. The government said Abouammo’s second question was an anomaly largely confined to the pandemic and not worth the high court’s time.

The case is Ahmad Abouammo v. United States, U.S., No. 25-5146.