Nearly 8-hour gap found in Trump’s Jan. 6 White House phone records
WASHINGTON — The House panel investigating the Jan. 6 insurrection at the Capitol has identified an almost 8-hour gap in official White House records of then- President Donald Trump’s phone calls as the violence unfolded and his supporters stormed the building, according to two people familiar with the probe.
The gap extends from a little after 11 a.m. to about 7 p.m. on Jan. 6, 2021, and involves White House phone calls, according to one of the people. Both spoke to The Associated Press on the condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to speak publicly about the ongoing investigation.
The committee is investigating the gap in the official White House log, which includes the switchboard and a daily record of the president’s activities. But it does not mean the panel is in the dark about what Mr. Trump was doing during that time.
The House panel has made broad requests for separate cellphone records and has talked to more than 800 witnesses, including many of the aides who spent the day with Mr. Trump. The committee also has thousands of texts from the cellphone of Mark Meadows, who was then Mr. Trump’s chief of staff.
The committee’s effort to piece together Mr. Trump’s day as his supporters broke into the Capitol underscores the challenge that his habitual avoidance of records laws poses — not only to historians of his tumultuous four years but to the House panel, which intends to capture the full story of the former president’s attempt to overturn the election results in hearings and reports later this year.
The committee has trained a particular focus on what the president was doing in the White House as hundreds of his supporters beat police, broke into the Capitol and interrupted the certification of Democrat Joe Biden’s 2020 presidential election victory. The missing records raise questions of whether Mr. Trump purposefully circumvented official channels to avoid records.
Mr. Trump was known to use other people’s cellphones to make calls, as well as his own. He often bypassed the White House switchboard, placing calls directly, according to a former aide who requested anonymity to discuss the private calls. It is not unusual for presidential calls to be channeled through other people.
It is unclear whether the committee has obtained records of cell phone calls made that day. The panel issued a broad records preservation order in August to almost three dozen telecommunications and social media companies, demanding that the companies save communications for several hundred people in case Congress decided to issue subpoenas for them. Individuals included in that request included Mr. Trump, members of his family and several of his Republican allies in Congress.
The committee also is continuing to receive records from the National Archives and other sources, which could produce additional information and help produce a full picture of the president’s communications.
Mr. Biden, who has authority as the sitting president over his predecessor’s White House privilege claims, said Tuesday he would reject Mr. Trump’s claims concerning the testimony of his daughter, Ivanka Trump, and her husband, Jared Kushner.