The special counsel in the federal election conspiracy trial of former President Donald Trump has signaled that he is hoping technology can be a witness for the prosecution.
The government alleges that Trump’s efforts to fight back against what he called election fraud in the 2020 election amounted to a conspiracy to overturn election results that began with Trump’s post-election lawsuit and continued through the events of Jan. 6, 2021, when a rally morphed into the Capitol incursion.
Trump faces four counts: conspiracy to defraud the United States, conspiracy to obstruct an official proceeding, obstruction of and attempt to obstruct an official proceeding, and conspiracy against rights. Trump has denied the charges.
A new court filing said special counsel Jack Smith will call three expert witnesses and in describing their roles in his case, illustrated the kind of information Smith has extracted from Trump’s phone.
“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),” the filing said.
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The filing said the expert “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.”
The expert also “determined the usage of these phones throughout the post-election period, including on and around January 6” and “specifically identified the periods of time during which the defendant’s phone was unlocked and the Twitter application was open on January 6,” the filing said.
According to CBS, Individual 1 has been identified as former New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani, who was Trump’s lawyer at the time of the 2020 election and was a central figure in many lawsuits that sought to push back against the results.
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Smith’s filing will also include an expert who has “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.”
That expert’s testimony “will aid the jury in understanding the movements of individuals toward the Capitol area during and after the defendant’s speech at the Ellipse,” Smith’s filing said.
A second expert will also be used to help Smith make his case of where various individuals were on Jan. 6.
The filing did not make it clear how much data Smith retrieved from Trump’s phone, Politico noted.
CBS reported that a multi-hour gap existed in the official log of Trump’s phone on Jan. 6, leading to speculation Trump may have used other devices that day.
Technology has been used before to prosecute individuals involved in the event of Jan. 6.
A report in The Washington Post said that based on a review of court records, searching what are known as push notifications — the alerts that tell a smartphone user they have a new message — to develop a map of a targeted individual’s contacts was used in the investigations of participants in the protests of Jan. 6, 2021, and the Capitol incursion that followed.
The Post noted that every push notification that tells a user a friend contacted them creates what is called a token. Obtaining information in the tokens allows investigators to determine who contacted the user.
Trump’s federal election conspiracy trial is scheduled to begin on March 4, according to Axios.
