In a new filing with the court from the federal prosecutors handling the case accusing former President Donald Trump of criminal conspiracies targeting the 2020 election results, Special Counsel Jack Smith’s team discusses location data they characterize as directly linking individual attendees of Trump’s January 6, 2021, speech to that day’s Capitol violence.
And they have consistently pointed to alleged culpability held by Trump himself in what took place at the Capitol, putting these latest statements in context. The filing related to expert testimony lined up for trial, the date of which is temporarily in limbo as Trump pursues arguments that he holds wide-ranging presidential immunity blocking prosecution.
“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,” the prosecution said, excluding the individual’s actual name from the filing. “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.”
Prosecutors have characterized Trump’s relationship to the Capitol violence, including in allegedly inciting it and then later expressing support for individual participants, as constituting alleged context critically relevant to the criminal conspiracies of which he’s accused. The circumstances could point broadly to Trump’s mindset and approach around these events. Smith’s team has, as trial (whenever precisely it happens) slowly approaches, pointed specifically to developments like Trump’s discussions of potentially pardoning January 6 participants if he retakes the White House and his complaints about the treatment faced by former national leader of the extremist Proud Boys Enrique Tarrio.
Tarrio was charged and convicted of seditious conspiracy in connection to the Capitol attack. Meanwhile, the new filing from Smith’s team on anticipated expert testimony also referenced an individual who’d apparently accessed and analyzed data from Trump’s personal cellphone he used while in office.
