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Hyosub Shin

In another bid for the “Worse than Watergate” files, it turns out there is a seven-hour gap in Donald Trump’s phone logs on the day of the insurrection attempt. According to <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/03/29/trump-white-house-logs/">documents obtained by The Post and CBS News</a>, there is no record of then-President Trump’s calls on Jan. 6, 2021, from just after 11 a.m. to shortly before 7 p.m.

That means there’s a big black hole in the record when it comes to Trump’s conversations throughout the period during which the mob assaulted the U.S. Capitol and violence raged over several hours.

The documents, which were turned over to the House select committee examining Jan. 6, do show that Trump had many calls before 11 a.m. and after 6 p.m. that were apparently related to the coup effort. That suggests Trump held many calls related to the insurrection between those two times that are not officially accounted for.

The noncooperation of Trump’s allies makes this story worse.

We already know Trump spoke to many key players by phone while the violence unfolded, thanks to dogged reporting and the Jan. 6 committee’s investigation thus far.

For instance, House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) pleaded with Trump <a href="https://www.cnn.com/2021/02/12/politics/trump-mccarthy-shouting-match-details/index.html">to call off the rioters</a>, to no avail. White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows urged Trump <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2021/12/13/mark-meadows-jan-6-committee-contempt-coverup/">to do the same and was with or near Trump</a> throughout that period.

Calls such as these are among those that should be in the phone logs but aren’t. The Post <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/03/29/trump-white-house-logs/">reports</a> that the committee is investigating whether Trump used burner phones during that period, but whatever we learn on that front, this whole story is made worse by the fact that those key players are <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2022/01/12/us/politics/kevin-mccarthy-jan-6-committee.html">refusing to cooperate</a> <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2021/12/13/mark-meadows-jan-6-committee-contempt-coverup/">with the committee</a>.

Here’s why: What’s at issue is how Trump reacted in real time as the violence unfolded. We know he <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/trump-mob-failure/2021/01/11/36a46e2e-542e-11eb-a817-e5e7f8a406d6_story.html">reportedly watched it on TV with relish and refused</a> multiple entreaties to issue a public statement calming the violence.

But it’s also likely Trump came to see the violence as helpful to intimidating his vice president, Mike Pence, and possibly lawmakers as well, into executing the scheme of delaying the electoral count. Trump reportedly <a href="https://www.cnn.com/2021/01/08/politics/mike-lee-tommy-tuberville-trump-misdialed-capitol-riot/index.html">called at least one GOP senator to press him</a> for help delaying the count while the violence raged, another call that isn’t in the logs.

“He was using the leverage of the violent insurrection to keep the inside political coup against Pence going,” Rep. Jamie B. Raskin (D-Md.), a member of the Jan. 6 committee, told me.

So the refusal of participation from key players who spoke to Trump during that period — and could illuminate his potential understanding of the violence as a weapon to complete the procedural coup — is the other piece of the coverup. It makes the missing phone logs look even worse.

“Most everyone not cooperating with the committee is helping shield Trump from public disclosure about what happened during that period,” Raskin said.

The Jan. 6 committee may already have records of missing calls.

It’s not clear why the phone logs are missing records of that seven-hour period — the committee is <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/03/29/trump-white-house-logs/">investigating</a> this as well — and truthfully, the explanation might not end up being scandalous.

But either way, the committee might be able to confirm many of Trump’s calls during that period, anyway, and indeed might already have done so.

That’s because the committee has already subpoenaed the phone records of some of these key players, <a href="https://www.cnn.com/2021/12/07/politics/january-6-committee-phone-records/index.html">as CNN recently reported</a>, and this includes Meadows. The committee has already started receiving some of this information, per CNN.

What’s more, last summer the committee <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/january-6-committee-telecoms/2021/08/30/a2592168-0997-11ec-a6dd-296ba7fb2dce_story.html">directed 35 telecom and social media companies to preserve</a> records of calls (without divulging whose calls are at issue). We don’t know how much of this information the committee has sought, but a committee staffer <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/02/26/cpac-trump-republicans/" target=_blank>recently divulged</a> that it just received a batch of new call records.

The point is that calls between Trump and people such as Meadows and McCarthy can be confirmed via this other route. That won’t reveal what transpired in the calls, but, by further confirming calls not listed in Trump’s logs, this will illustrate what is missing from them.

As Crooked Media editor in chief Brian Beutler notes, the missing phone logs give sordid new meaning to McCarthy’s recent threat that a GOP-controlled House will punish telecom companies that cooperate with the committee:

The hole in the logs strengthens the case for the committee to ignore McCarthy’s threats and proceed in assembling those phone records, to see what’s missing from Trump’s logs, a source familiar with the committee’s thinking points out to me.

The case for subpoenaing lawmakers might have just gotten stronger.

The committee is debating whether to subpoena members of Congress such as McCarthy and Rep. Jim Jordan (R-Ohio), who also <a href="https://www.cnn.com/2022/02/04/politics/jim-jordan-trump-january-6/index.html" target=_blank>talked to Trump on Jan. 6</a>. The source close to the committee tells me the missing phone logs might strengthen the case internally for subpoenaing them, because there should be more pressure on those lawmakers to testify about these calls with Trump.

Whether to subpoena lawmakers is a complicated question without obvious answers. Needless to say, they would resist and slow-walk the subpoenas, probably with much success.

But still, whatever we learn about the missing phone logs, subpoenas directed at those lawmakers — combined with their resistance — might starkly illustrate to the public how determined Trump’s allies are to help whitewash his insurrection attempt, which sparked the worst U.S. political violence in recent memory.

An Uncivil War: Taking Back Our Democracy in an Age of Trumpian Disinformation and Thunderdome Politics

Hunter College, BA in English

Greg Sargent was a columnist. He joined The Washington Post in 2010, after stints at Talking Points Memo, New York Magazine and the New York Observer.

Greg Sargent

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Three big takeaways from Trump’s missing Jan. 6 phone logs