Gap in the record
An 181/2 minute gap in President Richard M. Nixon’s Oval Office tapes fueled suspicions of a Watergate coverup and remains one of the most infamous symbols of White House malfeasance. A gap of seven hours and 37 minutes in President Donald Trump’s White House phone logs might be even more ignoble.
The Washington Post’s Bob Woodward and CBS News’ Robert Costa revealed Tuesday that the White House call records turned over to the House committee investigating the Jan. 6, 2021, attack are stunningly incomplete, showing no calls between 11:17 a.m. and 6:54 p.m.—that is, when a pro-Trump mob smashed its way into the Capitol. But Trump was not incommunicado. Voluminous reporting established long ago that he reached out to Sen. Tommy Tuberville, R-Ala., and spoke with House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy, R-Calif., during this period.
Did Trump or his aides purge the records, or did the then-president avoid using official channels to skirt record-keeping? In either case, how—and why? The White House records gap underlines questions about who else Trump spoke with, or tried to, and what he said.
These are not idle questions. They speak to Trump’s state of mind as he failed to call off the mob he had riled up that morning. Did he hope that the violence would intimidate then-Vice President Mike Pence into attempting to illegally overturn the 2020 presidential election results? Did he expect this to occur as he told his throngs to “show strength” that morning, or did he welcome the violence after it started?
The public needs answers. Even if Trump or one of his enablers does not run for president in 2024, history requires a complete record of Jan. 6’s horror.
Any kind of corrupt White House record-keeping is also a major problem. If presidents can ignore or evade record-keeping requirements with impunity, they could engage in extensive wrongdoing and bet that investigators will never find enough evidence to expose them.
The latest revelations should also remind lawmakers that the circumstances that led to Jan. 6 remain largely the same. Specifically, the Electoral Count Act, which governs the process for tallying presidential electoral votes, is vague, enabling those seeking to overturn election results far too much room to argue that the law would permit it.
A bipartisan group of senators is discussing long-needed reforms but has made little progress. They must get on with it.