WASHINGTON — The House committee investigating the January 6 attack
on the Capitol has discovered gaps in official White House telephone logs from
the day of the riot, finding few records of calls by President Donald Trump
from critical hours when investigators know that he was making them.
اضافة اعلان
Investigators have not uncovered evidence that any official
records were tampered with or deleted, and it is well known that Trump used his
personal cellphone, and those of his aides, routinely to talk with aides,
congressional allies and outside confidants.
But the sparse call records are the latest major obstacle to the
panel’s central mission: re-creating what Trump was doing behind closed doors
during crucial moments of the assault on Congress by a mob of his supporters.
The panel is still awaiting additional material from the National
Archives and Records Administration, which keeps the official White House logs,
and from telecommunications companies that have been subpoenaed for the
personal cellphone records of Trump’s inner circle, like his son, Eric, and
Kimberly Guilfoyle, the fiancee of Trump’s son Donald Trump Jr.
The call logs obtained by the committee document who was calling
the White House switchboard, and any calls that were being made from the White
House to others. Trump had a habit throughout his presidency of circumventing
that system, making it far more difficult to discern who he was communicating
with.
Since the Jan. 6, 2021, attack, former Trump administration
officials have said that investigators would struggle to piece together a
complete record of Trump’s conversations that day, because of his habit of
using his and other people’s cellphones. At least one person who tried to reach
Trump on his cellphone Jan. 6 had their call picked up by one of his aides.
Few details of what Trump did inside the White House as rioters
stormed the Capitol are known. He was watching television as the riot played
out on cable news, and several aides including his daughter, Ivanka Trump,
implored him to say something to try to tell the rioters to stop.
The committee has learned in recent weeks that
Trump spoke on
the phone with Vice President Mike Pence and Republican lawmakers on the
morning of Jan. 6 as he pushed to overturn the election. But many of the calls
the committee is aware of did not show up in the official logs.
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