The House select committee investigating the Capitol riot reportedly found gaps in the White House‘s phone logs for Jan. 6.
The Jan. 6 committee has not found evidence that the records were tampered with, but the gaps have created challenges for investigators to get a comprehensive account of former President Donald Trump‘s actions during the riot, the New York Times reported Thursday.
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“They got call logs from the National Archives, and as investigators were paging through these, they kept finding hours and hours of no calls from Donald Trump and they knew from public statements, interviews, and more that Trump was making calls during this time,” New York Times reporter Luke Broadwater told MSNBC. “So this throws a huge roadblock in the committee’s play as they try to paint this picture of exactly what Donald Trump did or did not do on Jan. 6.”
Trump was known to rely on a cellphone for certain calls — a practice that circumvented the White House switchboard system. During the early stages of his administration, he used a cellphone from his personal bodyguard at Trump Tower and the cellphone of the director of Oval Office operations for some calls, the New York Times reported.
Trump’s actions in the White House during the riot are not widely known. Stephanie Grisham, who was chief of staff and press secretary for the first lady, previously told CNN that Trump watched the riots unfold on TV. He also tweeted out a request for the rioters to remain peaceful after lawmakers were cleared from the Senate due to the riot, according to archives of his tweets.
Video Trump posted to his social media accounts after the tweets showed him telling his supporters “that you have to go home now.” Still, members of the Jan. 6 committee faulted Trump earlier this month for waiting what they said was 187 minutes to take sufficient action. They suspect there were multiple versions of the video message. “It appears that he tried to do a taping several times, but he wouldn’t say the right thing,” Chairman Bennie Thompson told the Washington Post in December.
The committee has subpoenaed phone companies for records of Trump’s associates, such as his son Eric Trump and Kimberly Guilfoyle. They are also waiting on additional documents from the National Archives and Records Administration, according to the New York Times.
Switchboard records reportedly show that Trump had calls with Vice President Mike Pence the day of the riot as he and allies sought to pressure Pence to try and stymie the certification of President Joe Biden’s 2020 election victory. He also had a call with Sen. Tommy Tuberville right as rioters were breaking in and House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy while the riot was underway.
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The Washington Examiner reached out to a spokesperson for the Jan. 6 committee but did not receive a response. The committee subpoenaed former White House trade adviser Peter Navarro on Wednesday as it seeks to investigate his efforts to overturn the 2020 election.
Trump has faced scrutiny in recent days for his record-keeping habits in the White House. Reports surfaced this week suggesting that he ripped up numerous documents and flushed documents down the toilet during his time in the White House. He also recently had to turn over documents he had kept with him to the National Archives in mid-January. The Jan. 6 committee has requested documents for its evaluation of the pressure Trump put on Pence during the buildup to Jan. 6 but discovered some of them no longer existed because they were shredded, a source told the Washington Post.
