By
Special counsel Jack Smith on Monday laid out his plan to have an expert witness testify in Donald Trump’s federal election interference case about data extracted from the former president's phone.
Smith's plan, outlined in a court filing, gives us a sense of the potential treasure trove of information available to the special counsel's team as it investigated Trump’s efforts to subvert the 2020 election.
The filing notifies Trump’s attorneys of three expert witnesses expected to be called by the prosecution. The first one has expertise in "the interpretation and visual representation of geographic location data," according to the filing.
Smith's team wrote:
Specifically, Expert 1 plotted the location history data for Google accounts and devices associated with individuals who moved, on January 6, 2021, from an area at or near the Ellipse to an area encompassing the United States Capitol building. His/her testimony will describe and explain the resulting graphical representations of that data, and it will aid the jury in understanding the movements of individuals toward the Capitol area during and after the defendant’s speech at the Ellipse.
We don't know what prosecutors plan to show with this expert's testimony but it's possible Smith is hoping to demonstrate the extent to which Trump’s instruction for his supporters to disrupt the vote count by marching to the Capitol motivated them to do just that.
The second witness referred to in Monday's filing is an expert in "the analysis of location data and location history data, including Google location history data." This individual can help the jury understand individuals’ movements toward the Capitol during and after Trump’s speech at the Ellipse on Jan. 6, prosecutors wrote.
And the third witness could end up being the most damaging to Trump, in my view. The Justice Department says this expert will bring knowledge regarding “the analysis of cellular phone data, including the use of Twitter and other applications on cell phones.”
According to the filing:
The Government expects that Expert 3 will testify that he/she: (1) extracted and processed data from the White House cell phones used by the defendant and one other individual (Individual 1); (2) reviewed and analyzed data on the defendant’s phone and on Individual 1’s phone, including analyzing images found on the phones and websites visited; (3) determined the usage of these phones throughout the post-election period, including on and around January 6, 2021; and (4) specifically identified the periods of time during which the defendant’s phone was unlocked and the Twitter application was open on January 6.
Here’s a list of Trump’s tweets on Jan. 6, 2021, as compiled by the University of California, Santa Barbara's The American Presidency Project. Though the experts outlined in Monday’s filing may not be able to prove that Trump personally posted those tweets, other witnesses could potentially help fill in the blanks in that regard.
I’ll also note that former Rep. Denver Riggleman, a Virginia Republican who assisted the House Jan. 6 Committee’s investigation as its senior technical adviser, has been saying for over a year now that digital data from phones used ahead of and on the day of the insurrection would be key in holding Trump and his associates accountable. It sure seems like he’s being proven correct.
Reading Monday’s filing, I’m reminded of the vast amount of data Big Tech companies keep on all of us, which many companies have been known to turn over after being served with subpoenas or warrants. This New York Times post is a helpful explainer on that. These days, our phones hoard all kinds of data about us — our location, the amount of time we spend using various apps and more.
That means obsessive phone users — as Trump appears to have been around Jan. 6 — may unwittingly create detailed logs of their actions that could become available to law enforcement. Smith appears prepared to capitalize on this in Trump's Washington case.