After a legal battle, the House select committee investigating Jan. 6 got official White House call records from that day—only to find a more than seven-hour gap in records of Donald Trump’s phone calls. There are no calls shown for Trump from 11:17 AM to 6:54 PM as a mob of his supporters violently attacked the U.S. Capitol in an attempt to block the certification of President Joe Biden’s 2020 win.
That doesn’t mean that Trump stayed off the phone during the attack. It means he was making calls from who knows what other phones—something a president is not supposed to do, for security reasons as well as national records ones—during those crucial hours. It has already been widely reported that during the attack on the Capitol, Trump called Sen. Mike Lee (looking for Sen. Tommy Tuberville) and spoke with House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy. And in the hours immediately before and after the attack, he was frequently on the phone, according to official records.
The documents provided include the president’s daily diary and a White House call log, with neither showing Trump having made or taken calls during that time. The daily diary is supposed to be a “chronological record of the President’s movements, phone calls, trips.”
Speaking anonymously, someone identified as “a lawmaker on the panel” told The Washington Post that the select committee is investigating a “possible coverup,” while another source (not identified as a member of the committee) said the gap is of “intense interest.”
Trump’s phone calls before and after the seven-hour gap include several people involved in the effort to overturn the election and/or promote the Jan. 6 rally and events, including Steve Bannon, Rudy Giuliani, and lawyer Kurt Olsen. Trump also talked to media figures like Sean Hannity.
But it’s the time when he was watching his supporters batter down doors and windows of the Capitol, vandalizing and looting as they searched for members of Congress and for his own vice president, Mike Pence, in an effort to stop the peaceful transition of power that is of the most interest to investigators. It’s that time that’s missing. During those hours, Trump was definitely on the phone, whether it was the personal cell phones of people around him or even disposable “burner phones.”
In a statement, Trump insisted, “I have no idea what a burner phone is, to the best of my knowledge I have never even heard the term.” Even if Trump habitually told the truth, though, “I have never heard the term burner phone” does not mean a person has never used a burner phone. But since he’s a known liar, the statement is worth nothing.
In a Monday ruling, a federal judge said that Trump “more likely than not” committed federal crimes in his efforts to block Congress from certifying the vote. And the White House call records suggest an attempt to hide who he was talking to as his mob stormed the Capitol. Donald Trump should be investigated not as a former president to whom deference is due but as any criminal would be investigated.
