College student tracking Taylor Swift’s private jet has done ‘nothing unlawful,’ his lawyers say
The Florida college student hit with a cease-and-desist letter from Taylor Swift’s lawyer after tracking the megastar’s private jet on Instagram revealed his lawyers’ damning response to the request Monday.
Jack Sweeney, 21, shared the letter his lawyers sent in response to the singer’s legal threat on X with a cheeky reference to one of Swift’s own songs.
“Look What You Made Me Do,” Sweeney tweeted, referring to the 2017 single from Swift’s “Reputation” album, alongside a copy of the Jan. 25 letter.
Sweeney’s attorneys sent the letter in response to one he received from Swift’s lawyer Katie Wright Morrone in December threatening that Swift “will have no choice but to pursue any and all legal remedies available to her” if he did not stop publishing the whereabouts of her jet.
Morrone, of Venable LLP, said the University of Central Florida junior who ran the now-defunct Instagram account @taylorswiftjets “engaged in stalking and harassing behavior” by sharing the movements of the star’s personal plane in real time on social media.
“This conduct poses an imminent threat to the safety and wellbeing of our Client and must stop,” she said in the initial letter, adding that it was a “life-or-death matter” for Swift, 34, who has dealt with stalkers since she was a teen.
But Sweeney’s attorney swiftly clapped back, saying Morrone failed to identify any legal claim against their client, who publishes publicly available data from the Federal Aviation Administration and utilizes his “protected speech.”
“Put simply, there is nothing unlawful about [Sweeney’s] use of publicly accessible information to track private jets, including those used by public figures like Taylor Swift,” attorney James Slater of Slater Legal PLLC wrote back.
Slater noted that the college student has also published the flight paths of jets belonging to sanctioned Russian oligarchs and Elon Musk.
“The @taylorswiftjets account is engaged in protected speech that does not violate any of Ms. Swift’s legal rights,” he added. “Your letter makes that clear by failing to identify any legal claim.”
The only claim Morrone flirted with was a California law on stalking, but even there, the statute defines a stalker as someone who makes a “credible threat” against the victim — and Sweeney has never threatened the singer-songwriter, according to the 21-year-old’s lawyer.
Slater also said the information citing the location of private jets does not pose a threat to Swift’s safety.
“We do not know why you believed the best claim against an individual in Florida and his company is a California statute, but that, combined with the absence of any credible legal claim, suggests a groundless effort to intimidate and censor our clients,” Slater finished.
Though the @taylorswiftjets account was shut down by Instagram for violating its policy, Sweeney continues to share posts about the star’s air travel on his other account Celeb Jets, where he also posts the trips taken by other Hollywood elites.
Swift has faced backlash for the environmental impact of her many flights across the country to visit her boyfriend, Travis Kelce, and attend his Kansas City Chiefs games.
In 2022, the Grammy winner was named the “biggest celebrity [carbon dioxide] polluter” of the year in an analysis that cited Sweeney’s accounts. Her publicist said her jet was regularly borrowed by other people.
Amid the flight-tracking battle, Swift sold one of her two private jets on Jan. 30, according to FAA data.
