A terrorism expert testified Tuesday that the man accused of killing 11 people at a Squirrel Hill synagogue in 2018 dealt in the same kinds of hateful tropes, symbols and conspiracies used online by many white supremacists in the United States.

William Braniff is director of the Center for Prevention Programs and Partnerships at the U.S. Department of Homeland Security. Braniff testified as an expert in white supremacist ideologies and antisemitism as the government began to wind down its case against Robert Bowers, who entered the Tree of Life synagogue on Oct. 27, 2018, armed with an AR-15 and three handguns.

At the conclusion of the day, Assistant U.S. Attorney Soo Song told the court the government has four witnesses remaining and likely will rest its case by mid-afternoon Wednesday.

The defense did not say if it would call witnesses or if the case would move directly into closing arguments before U.S. District Judge Robert Colville.

The trial against Bowers, 50, of Baldwin is in the guilt phase and began May 30. If he is convicted, the case will move into a penalty phase, expected to last six weeks.

The government is seeking the death penalty.

Bowers is charged with 63 counts, including that he killed the victims, who all were attending worship services, because they were Jewish.

During opening statements, the defense admitted Bowers attacked the synagogue but claimed he was not motivated by the victims’ religion. Instead, they said, Bowers was angry that Jews were assisting the refugee resettlement group HIAS.

Those killed were members of the Tree of Life-Or L’Simcha, Dor Hadash and New Light congregations. They included Rose Mallinger, 97; Bernice Simon, 84, and her husband, Sylvan Simon, 86; brothers David Rosenthal, 54, and Cecil Rosenthal, 59; Dan Stein, 71; Dr. Jerry Rabinowitz, 66; Joyce Fienberg, 75; Melvin Wax, 87; Irving Younger, 69; and Richard Gottfried, 65.

Much of the day Tuesday was dedicated to Bowers’ activity on the far-right social media platform Gab.com, where he posted prolifically in the weeks and months leading up to the attack. According to earlier testimony, the FBI found more than 300 posts, reposts or items Bowers “liked” on Gab that reflect antisemitism.

Braniff, who spent nearly three hours on the stand Tuesday, did not offer specific conclusions about Bowers’ actions online, but he explained to the jury what the various words, symbols, memes and images the defendant posted mean.

Among them, the defendant used slurs for Jewish people, praised Hitler, spread Holocaust denial theories and talked about killing Jews.

The items included well-known and obscure references to antisemitism and white supremacist ideology, Braniff said.

Bowers’ account cited “blood libel” on Gab, a Middle Ages-era concept that Jews used Christian children’s blood to make matzoh, an unleavened bread eaten during the Jewish holiday of Passover, Braniff said. It also referenced Biblical passages — from Matthew 23:37 to Revelation 3:9 — that Braniff said white supremacists use to justify violence against Jews and “the synagogue of Satan.”

The terms were voluminous.

Gab.com posts made, reposted or liked by Bowers made mention of the founder of the American Nazi Party; a code for “heil Hitler”; allusions to The Christian Identity Movement and “the day of the rope” — the day in the 1978 book “The Turner Diaries” when “race traitors working with the Jewish government” are hanged, Braniff said.

The cover photo of Bowers’ Gab account had a picture of the number 1488, which refers to a 14-word saying from the “White Genocide Manifesto,” and the expression “heil Hitler.” His bio on the social media network called Jews “the children of Satan.”

Braniff was retained by prosecutors years ago when he was director of the National Consortium for the Study of Terrorism and Responses to Terrorism at the University of Maryland. He is a graduate of the U.S. Military Academy at West Point and served as an Army officer for five years.

Defense attorney Michael Burt challenged Braniff’s status as an expert on domestic terrorism, questioning him on the number of times he testified in court as an expert in foreign terrorism and extremism.

While Braniff has testified at least five times about terrorism, this trial is the first time he was recognized as an expert on domestic terrorism.

The witness said his focus shifted to domestic terrorism and extreme ideologies as they began to spread in the United States. He has testified and lectured before Congress, the United Nations, NATO and at the first White House Summit on Hate Crimes late last year.

Braniff told the jury Bowers’ posts about “optics” — including the last one he wrote moments before entering the synagogue, in which he said, “Screw your optics, I’m going in” — referenced an ongoing debate in the white supremacy movement.

That debate, Braniff said, is between groups who believe the best way to advance their goals is through violence and others who believe they should keep a lower profile and slowly shift the culture.

Earlier Tuesday, FBI tactical specialist Evan Browne told the jury he analyzed 19,000 rows of data provided by Gab regarding Bowers’ posts. He did a word search on that activity and found Bowers posted a slur for Jewish people 87 times in 2018. He said “Jew” 152 times.

By comparison, he said “immigration” once and “refugee” only three times, potentially undermining the defense’s opening-statement claim that Bowers committed the shooting because of his hatred of HIAS, not Jews.

In addition to his posts, Bowers liked antisemitic content posted by other people, Browne said. They included:

• A Feb. 18, 2018, post that called for a “race war” to create a “White-only nation.”

• A Feb. 28, 2018, post comparing Jews to an HIV infection.

• A March 1, 2018, post calling Jewish people a “blood-thirsty tribe.”

• A March 7, 2018, post about the Final Solution, Adolf Hitler’s plan to murder all Jews in Europe.

• A March 8, 2018, post saying Jews are “children of the devil.”

• A May 9, 2018, post that said the “bad guys won” World War II.

• A June 11, 2018, post that said, “Everything that’s screwed up in our world today is either caused or pushed by Jews.”

A keyword search of the posts “liked” by Bowers used the words “immigration” on 83 occasions; “invader,” 48 times; “refugee,” 58 times; “HIAS,” twice; a Jewish slur, 449 times; and “Jew,” 2,372 times.

Browne also testified that, in the three weeks leading up to the shooting, Bowers visited the HIAS website Oct. 6, 10, 21, 25 and 27 — repeatedly on some of those days.

He visited the website 90 minutes before that attack, Browne testified.

The final government witness called Tuesday was physical scientist Erich Smith, a forensic examiner for the FBI’s firearms and toolmarks unit in Quantico, Va.

Smith, who deployed to Squirrel Hill the day of the shooting and remained there for nine days, did a “shooting incident reconstruction” on the synagogue building. He testified about bullet holes and impacts he found throughout the building, including the trajectory some of the bullets took.

One exhibit shown Tuesday was a Tree of Life Congregation “In Memoriam” plaque, on which bullets hit two nameplates, leaving them hanging off the display.

Smith said ballistic evidence in Pervin Chapel included a blue prayer book that had been in the holder of the back of a pew. The impact was so hard that it blew the book, previously seen during Rabbi Jeffrey Myers’ testimony, out of its wooden holder and across two other pews.

Although the attorneys have been in the courtroom throughout the trial, that has not stopped them from filing additional motions in the case.

On Tuesday, the defense filed a motion seeking to prohibit prosecutors from talking about the survivors and responding police officers’ heroism that day.

“Although the defense does not dispute that the deceased and surviving victims had or have many admirable qualities and engaged in heroic acts on Oct. 27, 2018, any government arguments to that effect are improper,” they wrote.

They said the government’s characterization during opening statements was intended to encourage jurors to base their verdict on passion, sympathy and emotion.

The defense asked, in the same motion, to preclude the government from telling the jury children, who typically attended junior congregation three Saturdays each month but did not that day, could have been harmed.

They called it “highly prejudicial and irrelevant.”

Late Monday, the defense filed another motion asking Colville to hold a hearing to determine if the government violated an order forbidding members of the trial team from participating in the mental health evaluation of the defendant by their experts.

Bowers’ lawyers have said that, during the sentencing phase, they could offer a mental health defense, including that he has schizophrenia.

The government sought, and was granted, a request to have their psychiatric experts evaluate him, a process that occurred between jury selection and the start of testimony. The reports from that evaluation are to be kept under seal, including from government prosecutors, until that portion of the trial.

However, according to Monday’s motion, members of the prosecution trial team observed the government expert interviewing at least four witnesses, including three officers from Butler County Prison, where Bowers is.

In the motion, the defense noted the government objected to any of Bowers’ team observing the evaluations.

“By arranging for one of its trial lawyers and its case agent to be present during these interviews, the government has done precisely what it fought so hard and so successfully to prevent defense counsel from doing, i.e., access a portion of the expert’s evaluation process prior to the conclusion of the guilt phase of the trial,” the defense wrote.

Prosecutors have until 9 a.m. Wednesday to file a response.

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