By The Department of Justice prosecutor going after former President Donald Trump, Jack Smith, has announced that he somehow captured data from the president’s phone while he was still serving in the White House.
For anyone concerned about “the Deep State,” these new revelations will undoubtedly raise more than a few eyebrows.
Special counsel Jack Smith has extracted data from the cell phone Donald Trump used while in the White House and plans to present evidence of his findings to a Washington, D.C. jury to demonstrate how Trump used the phone in the weeks during which he attempted to subvert the 2020 election, writes Politico.
In a court filing Monday, Smith indicated that he plans to call an expert witness who extracted and reviewed data copied from Trump’s phone, as well as a phone used by another unidentified individual in Trump’s orbit.
The data from Trump’s phone could reveal day-to-day details of his final weeks in office, including his daily movements, his Twitter habits and any other aides who had access to his accounts and devices. The data, for example, could help show whether Trump personally approved or sent a fateful tweet attacking his vice president, Mike Pence, during the Jan. 6 riot at the Capitol.
It’s unclear, though, what the extent of Smith’s access to Trump’s phone was. While Smith described in the filing using the data to view images, websites and locations, it’s unclear if he accessed the substance of Trump’s communications or if anything was shielded due to executive privilege or other limits.
Smith did not identify the expert witness, nor did he explain how he was able to obtain data from a phone used by the president of the United States.
The federal prosecutor also used a warrant to obtain Donald Trump’s Twitter usage data on January 6, 2021.
Fox News reported that “the cell phone data Smith plans to use in the trial is in addition to Trump’s direct messages on the social media platform once known as Twitter, despite the company’s efforts to block access.
Attorneys for the company, now named X Corp., attempted to block and delay the effort in January and February, however, leading one federal judge to speculate that X owner and one-time CEO Elon Musk was attempting to ally himself with Trump.
The social media giant ultimately lost the struggle, however, and was forced to hand over an extensive list of data related to the ‘@realdonaldtrump’ account, including all tweets ‘created, drafted, favorited/liked, or retweeted.’
The handover also included searches on the platform surrounding the 2020 election, devices used to log into the account, IP addresses used to log into the account, and a list of associated accounts.”
In 2016, Trump alleged that the FBI spied on his campaign, an accusation that the United States Senate later confirmed. In July 2020, Senator Chuck Grassley revealed that “federal agents hijacked an August 2016 security briefing to surreptitiously gather information on Trump campaign officials.”
The new information from Trump’s phone may be the least of Smith’s concerns soon, however. On Monday, he asked the Supreme Court to fast-track a ruling on presidential immunity that could turn out to be an all-or-nothing gamble.
Trump’s legal team has claimed that as president, Trump could not be prosecuted for actions taken while serving in the White House during the mobbing of the Capitol on January 6, 2021, arguing that his actions were taken as part of his official duties.
“If Donald Trump is to win here, obviously Jack Smith’s federal election interference case is out the window,” CNN’s legal analyst recently explained. “I also think Fani Willis’ case is doomed. Yes, that is a state-level case, but the principles of immunity would apply whether it’s a federal or state-level prosecution. Again, that’s if Trump wins.”
CNN's Elie Honig names one thing that could doom cases against Trump pic.twitter.com/4yokeNaS6K
— Nicole Silverio (@NicoleMSilverio) December 11, 2023
Smith’s appeal to the Supreme Court to speed up the former president’s trial reveals just how political the prosecution really is, writes Washington Post writer Jason Willick has explained.
“The case must be accelerated, because if it’s not accelerated, it will be delayed. But trials are delayed all the time, sometimes for years. Smith doesn’t say what he means: If the justices don’t take the case now, the chances of completing a trial before the 2024 election will go down. If Trump is not tried and convicted by the election, the chances of a Biden victory will take a hit.
Trump, of course, wants to delay the trial out of self-preservation. If he wins the election, his Justice Department could halt his federal prosecutions. But if Smith’s decisions were independent of the political calendar, that would be of no concern to him. His job is supposedly to work for the Justice Department — not to try to influence which party controls the Justice Department at a given time.
There might be an argument that it’s legitimate for Smith to take the election date into account, but it’s telling that his Supreme Court filing doesn’t make it. That’s because it would amount to a confession of what even Smith’s defenders must be able to see: The special counsel is an aggressive political actor seeking a political outcome as much as a legal one. The fiction that he is anything else is outliving its usefulness.”
We will know soon enough. The Supreme Court has asked to hear an argument from Trump’s team by December 20. Smith aims to begin his trial of the president over the events of January 6, 2021, sometime in March 2024.
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