Background: Special couunsel Jack Smith. (AP Photo/J. Scott Applewhite, File) Inset: Republican presidential candidate and former President Donald Trump speaks to the crowd during a caucus event, Saturday, Dec. 2, 2023, at Kirkwood Community College in Cedar Rapids, Iowa. (Geoff Stellfox/The Gazette via AP)
Jack Smith has three expert witnesses who will testify, based on analysis of location and cell phone data, on how people moved during and after Donald Trump’s Jan. 6 speech at the Ellipse and how Trump’s phone was used “throughout the post-election period,” the special counsel revealed Tuesday.
In a brief summary of expert testimony to come, Smith anticipated that Expert 1, Expert 2, and Expert 3 will play a role in outlining for a Jan. 6 jury how data supports that government’s allegations that Trump conspired to defraud the United States, conspired to obstruct the Jan. 6 congressional certification of the 2020 election, obstructed the proceeding, and perpetrated a conspiracy against civil rights.
Smith said Trump is now on notice that Expert 1 (none of the experts were identified by name) has “knowledge, skill, experience, training, and education beyond the ordinary lay person regarding the interpretation and visual representation of geographic location data” and can speak to, through analysis of the data, how various individuals moved towards the U.S. Capitol “during and after” Trump’s fateful speech at the Ellipse, which he encouraged his supporters to attend weeks earlier to protest the “stolen” election.
“Be there, will be wild!” Trump tweeted on Dec. 19, 2020, of the “Big protest in D.C. on January 6th.”
On Jan. 6, 2021, Trump told his supporters, “All of us here today do not want to see our election victory stolen by emboldened radical-left Democrats, which is what they’re doing. And stolen by the fake news media. That’s what they’ve done and what they’re doing. We will never give up, we will never concede. It doesn’t happen. You don’t concede when there’s theft involved.”
As Trump told the crowd “you’ll never take back our country with weakness,” encouraged them to “be strong” and “demand that Congress do the right thing and only count the electors who have been lawfully slated,” he also said “I know that everyone here will soon be marching over to the Capitol building to peacefully and patriotically make your voices heard.”
“We fight like hell. And if you don’t fight like hell, you’re not going to have a country anymore,” Trump said in closing.
Expert 1 will testify about using “software to create a map of the Google 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,” Smith’s filing said. “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.”
Expert 2 will similarly testify about how people moved during and after Trump’s speech, and about the technical work involved in determining the “approximate location at which a device with Google location history activated was used at a particular time or range of times.”
“The Government expects that Expert 2 will testify about: the process of determining device location; the collection and use of location history data by Google, LLC; and location history data produced in response to a search warrant and included in the graphical representation prepared by Expert 1,” the Special Counsel’s Office said. “His/her 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.”
Expert 3’s expected testimony will be about both Trump’s White House cell phone use and that of unidentified Individual-1 after losing the 2020 election. That testimony will likely include details about when Trump’s phone was unlocked and when his Twitter app (now known as X) was open on Jan. 6:
Expert 3 has knowledge, skill, experience, training, and education beyond the ordinary lay person regarding the analysis of cellular phone data, including the use of Twitter and other applications on cell phones. 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.
In short, leaving aside whether Trump himself was using his phone throughout Jan. 6 or if it was being accessed by others or both, the prosecution expects to show how the device was used in the lead-up to and on Jan. 6 — for instance, a certain post sent after the violence broke out at the Capitol, saying: “Mike Pence didn’t have the courage to do what should have been done to protect our Country and our Constitution, giving States a chance to certify a corrected set of facts, not the fraudulent or inaccurate ones which they were asked to previously certify. USA demands the truth!”
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