In a damning analysis for Donald Trump’s impeachment defense, the New York Times published a detailed analysis of cell phone tracking in the vicinity of Trump’s inflammatory speech on the Ellipse January 6th and found that 40% of those people participated in the domestic terrorist attack on the Capitol minutes later.

The anonymized data, using cell phone signals pinging towers and relays as well as apps with location tracking, provides detailed information on the number and travel of people that day.  It collected more than 100,000 pings from thousands of phones, including around 130 devices that pinged sensors from inside the Capitol complex itself.

The analysis undercuts the claims of Donald Trump and his supporters that his call from the dais at the Ellipse to go to the Capitol to “fight” otherwise “you won’t have a country” were inconsequential to the subsequent attack by domestic terrorists.

Estimates show that around 30,000 people attended Trump’s speech at the Ellipse; an estimated 10,000 people were part of the insurrection at the Capitol immediately afterward.  The accuracy of the cell phone data is 187 feet within the Capitol complex buildings and slightly more than 300 feet outside the building.

With a court subpoena, the data may also be “unmasked” by law enforcement during trials to show the path of specific individuals to be used during trials.

Some data were gathered through location services posted on social media, matched to photos, posts and timestamps on services like Facebook, Twitter and Parler.