Trump’s Jan 6 phone records have 7-hour gap spanning riot

Records pose challenge for select committee trying to reconstruct chain of events

New reporting has revealed that the White House records from 6 January 2021 obtained by the select committee investigating the Capitol riot show a seven-hour gap in Donald Trump’s phone logs – a period of time that spans the all-important hours before, during and after the incident.

According to CBS News and the Washington Post, White House records turned over to the committee by the National Archives and Records Administration do not include any calls made or recieved by Mr Trump between the hours of 11:17am and 6:54pm — a period spans from the time just before he exhorted supporters gathered at the White House to march to the Capitol to the hour at which police regained control of the US legislature’s building.

The lack of documentation for Mr Trump’s phone calls during the worst attack on the Capitol since Major General Robert Ross ordered it set ablaze in 1814 is belied by extensive public reporting which shows the then-president was not incommunicado while a mob of his supporters was attempting to sack the building in hopes of stopping certification of President Joe Biden’s 2020 election victory.

Mr Trump is known to have made at least two phone calls during the riot.

The first was a call mistakenly placed to the mobile phone of Utah Senator Mike Lee in an attempt to speak with Alabama’s Tommy Tuberville.

Mr Lee recieved the call just after the upper chamber suspended business because rioters had entered the Capitol. He then passed the phone to Mr Tuberville, who Mr Trump reportedly urged to continue objecting to swing state electoral college ballots despite the violence that led Mr Tuberville to end the call because senators were told to leave the senate chamber by police.

The second, a phone call with House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy, was described in a statement by Republican congresswoman Jamie Herrera Beutler of Washington which was made part of the record in Mr Trump’s second impeachment trial.

Ms Herrera Beutler said Mr McCarthy asked the then-president to “publicly and forcefully call off the riot,” at which point Mr Trump falsely claimed the mob was composed of self-described “Antifa,” or anti-fascist protesters.

After Mr McCarthy told Mr Trump the mob was made up of his people, Ms Herrera Beutler said Mr Trump replied: “Well, Kevin, I guess these people are more upset about the election than you are”.

During his presidency, Mr Trump was frequently known to use mobile phones — his own or those of staff members and even Secret Service agents — to make all manner of calls, official and otherwise.

Using non-government mobile phones, rather than the White House’s own phone system, would cause a gap in the White House’s own switchboard logs, but other records known as the president’s “diary” are supposed to reflect any calls made or recieved by the president which could be omitted from switchboard records.

The report also states that select committee members are investigating whether lack of official records documenting Mr Trump’s communications during the attack is the result of a “possible cover-up” on the part of Mr Trump and his advisers.

In particular, the committee is probing whether Mr Trump or his advisers used disposable so-called “burner” phones to evade official record-keeping of the president’s communications.

Another source, a “person close to the committee,” said the gap in phone records is of “intense interest” to the nine-member panel.

In a statement, Mr Trump said he had “no idea what a burner phone is,” adding that he had “never even heard the term” to the “best of [his] knowledge”.

A spokesperson for Mr Trump added that he had assumed all of his calls were being documented properly.