Special counsel prosecutors indicated on Monday they will call three expert witnesses at Donald Trump’s trial over his efforts to overturn the 2020 election who could potentially show how January 6 rioters moved on the Capitol in response to the former president’s tweets.
The witnesses, according to a three-page filing, involve two experts on geolocation data to show the crowd’s movement during and after Trump’s speech at the Ellipse, and an expert on cellular phone data to testify about when and how Trump’s phone was being used, including over the same time period.
Expert 3 will testify that they extracted data from official government phones belonging to Trump and one unnamed individual, how the phones were used in the post-2020 election period, including the websites visited, and when Trump’s phone accessed Twitter during January 6.
The fact that the special counsel, Jack Smith, had obtained warrants for Trump’s phone and Trump’s Twitter/X account was disclosed in unsealed court filings. But the description of the anticipated testimony suggested they gathered more granular information than previously known.
The notice of expert testimony in Trump’s federal 2020 election interference case – he is also facing a 2020 interference case in Fulton county, Georgia – also reveals how prosecutors intend to deploy the evidence they amassed during the criminal investigation at trial.
In recent weeks, prosecutors have made it increasingly clear that they want to make the case that Trump sought to obstruct the January 6 congressional certification of the election results with the rioters by tying him to the Capitol attack, as well as through political means.
The notice about the subject of the expert witness testimony suggests prosecutors also intend to make the case that Trump – through his action and inaction – simultaneously advanced the physical obstruction of Congress as the Capitol attack progressed.
Testimony from the first two geolocation experts will help to “aid the jury in understanding the movements of individuals toward the Capitol area during and after the defendant’s speech at the Ellipse”, the filing said.
Still, the filing stopped short of claiming that the experts could definitely say who used the phones at any given moment, probably because Trump often used other people’s phones and had aide Dan Scavino compose tweets for him – something Trump’s defense lawyers are almost certain to focus on.
Prosecutors previously said in the 45-page indictment that they had evidence Trump knew of the significance of impeding the vote certification when he pressured his vice-president, Mike Pence, to interfere, saying he otherwise could not remain president.
Trump took steps to obstruct the certification through political means by imploring Pence to accept fake slates of Trump electors to delay proceedings or reject the Biden slates, and asked senators to keep delaying the certification after it was interrupted by the riot.
