Who was Don talking to?
Panel sees gaps in record of calls during riot
White House call logs obtained by the Jan. 6 committee attack on the Capitol do not list calls made by then-President Donald Trump as he watched the violence unfold on television, nor do they list calls made directly to the president, according to two people familiar with the probe.
Official records that were turned over to the panel only reveal a few calls that Trump made and received on the day of the insurrection even though witnesses say the then-president made many calls as the violence unfolded, as first reported by The New York Times and CNN.
There are several possible explanations for omissions in the records, which do not reflect conversations that Trump had on Jan. 6 with multiple Republican lawmakers, for example. Trump was known to use a personal cell phone, or he could have had a phone passed to him by an aide.
Some of the former president’s calls have already been reported or discussed by recipients, like a morning chat with Sen. Tommy Tuberville (R-Ala.) and fellow far right-winger Sen. Mike Lee (R-Utah) that does not appear on
the official log.
The former president also called Vice President Mike Pence on the morning of the riot. He sought to harangue his loyal lieutenant into joining the effort to overturn President Biden’s election win, but the call also does not appear on the log.
Because the committee lacks a complete official record of Trump’s calls, they subpoenaed phone records of Trump allies, aides and family members to map
his contacts on Jan. 6.
House Oversight and Reform Committee Chairwoman Carolyn Maloney (D-N.Y.) said that she was “deeply concerned that these records were not provided to the National Archives and Records Administration promptly at the end of the Trump administration and they appear to have been removed from the White House.”
The gaps in the logs are somewhat reminiscent of the infamous 18½ minute gap in White House tapes of conversations between former President Richard Nixon and aides as he unsuccessfully sought to keep a lid on the Watergate scandal.
Nixon’s fiercely loyal secretary, Rose Mary Woods, gained a cameo in history when she claimed she inadvertently erased parts of the tapes that critics suspect included damning admissions by Nixon.
The National Archives, in its own statements earlier this week, acknowledged that Trump representatives had been cooperating with it and had located records “that had not been transferred to the National Archives at the end of the Trump administration.” The agency arranged for the documents to be transported to Washington and did not travel to Florida.
“Whether through the creation of adequate and proper documentation, sound records management practices, the preservation of records, or the timely transfer of them to the National Archives at the end of an administration, there should be no question as to need for both diligence and vigilance,” archivist David Ferriero said. “Records matter.”