A search warrant has been issued for Alec Baldwin's iPhone, after the actor said in a recently televised interview he did not expect to be criminally charged. The warrant was sought by Santa Fe County Sheriff’s Detective Alexandria Hancock in her investigation of the Rust movie shooting on October 21 of this year. Mr. Baldwin, who was both a performer and producer on the film, shot and killed cinematographer Halyna Hutchins as they rehearsed a scene for the low-budget western. Judge David Segura, of New Mexico’s Magistrate Court, signed the warrant on Thursday, December 16, at 2:34 p.m. local time.
Deadline published the search warrant and application. Hancock's affidavit says she “believes there may be evidence on the phone, due to individuals using cellular phones during and/or after the commission of crime(s).” Per the application, the detective states she “was also made aware there were several emails and text messages sent and received regarding the movie production ‘Rust’ in the course of interviews.”
The warrant orders the detective to seize the phone and conduct a full forensic download of the device’s data. The list of information sought and ordered is exhaustive. It includes all images, emails, movies, social network messages and accounts, browser histories, text messages, and all deleted versions of the same. Any type of app or program used to facilitate the above, as well as those messages or media that have been transferred from the device to the cloud, for instance, are also covered.
Baldwin’s lawyer, Aaron Dyer, told Deadline, “We are confident that the evidence will show that Mr. Baldwin is not responsible civilly or criminally for what occurred on October 21, and he continues to cooperate with authorities.” He said Baldwin’s legal team requested that authorities get a warrant so information they uncover unrelated to the shooting investigation remains private. There’s reason to believe that statement is true because the warrant application mentions the destruction of Baldwin’s non-relevant private information more than once. It says, “again, any information obtained through the execution of this warrant that is unrelated to the objective of this warrant will be sealed and later destroyed as soon as feasible after the termination, adjudication, and conclusion of the investigation and court proceedings.”
As anybody with a law degree or a few seasons of viewing Law & Order reruns under their belt could have told him, Baldwin’s recent sit-down with ABC’s George Stephanopoulos has done him no favors regarding his penal interests. Baldwin told the television host, “I have been told by people who are in the know, in terms of even inside the state, that it’s highly unlikely that I would be charged with anything criminally.”
You can read the warrant and application in full here.
~ Read more from Scott D. Cosenza.
