Jack Smith Conducted Chilling Search Of Donald Trump’s Private Communications For J6 Trial
New filings in the federal J6 case against former President Donald Trump indicate that special counsel Jack Smith plans to call on an expert who has extracted private communications conducted from the president’s cell phone during the Capitol riots.
Smith wrote to U.S. District Court Judge Tanya Chutkan that prosecutors plan to call on an expert witness skilled in the “analysis of cellular phone data” extracted from “White House cell phones used by the defendant and one other individual.” Specifically, Smith’s team references the use of Twitter/X and other applications on President Trump’s phone. The expert’s testimony will also cover “images found on the phone and websites visited… on and around January 6, 2021.”
Another filing by Jack Smith.
He collected data off Trump’s cell phones including “images and websites visited” and when Trump left his Twitter app open on January 6.
Smith is a sick individual who should immediately be defunded and investigated–“deranged” is too kind. pic.twitter.com/mr1wStgOpz
— Julie Kelly 🇺🇸 (@julie_kelly2) December 11, 2023
The latest filing offers a chilling window into the mind of Smith, who is intent on proving that President Trump’s communications around J6 contributed to violence during the riots. The former president’s legal team has pushed back forcefully and pointed to a post Trump made asking for J6 participants to “peacefully” disperse once the Capitol was breached.
Most recently, Judge Chutkan ruled that President Trump cannot claim immunity from prosecution as a former U.S. president, a decision that Smith asked the U.S. Supreme Court to fast-track for review around the appeals court system. The high court on Monday signaled it will consider the argument, potentially speeding up the case against Trump by months.
Immunity is not the only card President Trump is playing to slow-walk prosecution. His attorneys have petitioned Judge Chutkan to grant them access to millions of pages of documents that Smith plans to use against Trump; if successful, a window to review the breadth of evidence could stretch the trial far past its March 2024 start date. A similar motion in Smith’s classified documents case against President Trump already proved successful.
President Trump has sharply criticized Judge Chutkan, an Obama appointee, for imposing a gag order preventing him from speaking freely about the case. However, she did not go as far as Smith wanted, refusing to imprison Trump if he were to violate the order.
The political repercussions of the case cannot go unnoticed by Smith, as well. President Trump’s legal team, buttressed by tens of millions of dollars in donations from supporters, is costing Smith and his team $25 million in each of their two cases against the GOP frontrunner. Eric Holder, the former U.S. Attorney General, admitted that prosecuting President Trump only helps prove his case that the charges against him are politically motivated, an argument that has propelled his standing in the polls among Republican primary voters.
