Those of a certain vintage will recall the infamous June 20, 1972 “gap” found in President Richard Nixon’s secret Oval Office recordings surrendered during the Watergate investigation. The White House explanation offered was that somehow Nixon’s personal secretary, Rose Mary Woods, had accidentally erased 18.5 minutes (there were actually five to nine erasures). The erasure covered a conversation between Nixon and Chief of Staff H. R. Haldeman about the Watergate break-in. Woods told a grand jury how she might have erased it accidentally. Her demonstration — leaning over to answer the phone while her foot contacted a floor switch for the recording device — landed her on the cover of Newsweek. Woods died at 87 in 2005.
Never one to be outdone, Donald Trump’s White House record “gap” half a century after the Watergate coverup is much bigger. Yuge (Washington Post):
Internal White House records from the day of the attack on the U.S. Capitol that were turned over to the House select committee show a gap in President Donald Trump’s phone logs of seven hours and 37 minutes, including the period when the building was being violently assaulted, according to documents obtained by The Washington Post and CBS News.
The lack of an official White House notation of any calls placed to or by Trump for 457 minutes on Jan. 6, 2021 – from 11:17 a.m. to 6:54 p.m. – means the committee has no record of his phone conversations as his supporters descended on the Capitol, battled overwhelmed police and forcibly entered the building, prompting lawmakers and Vice President Mike Pence to flee for safety.
Very convenient.
The records show that Trump was active on the phone for part of the day, documenting conversations that he had with at least eight people in the morning and 11 people that evening. The seven-hour gap also stands in stark contrast to the extensive public reporting about phone conversations he had with allies during the attack, such as a call Trump made to Sen. Mike Lee (R-Utah) — seeking to talk to Sen. Tommy Tuberville (R-Ala.) — and a phone conversation he had with House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.).
The committee is wondering if the furnished records are complete. It also wants to find out if Trump used backchannels instead for communications that day to cover his tracks: phones belonging to aides or “burner phones.” Trump had a habit of making calls from various non-official devices. Trump claims no knowledge of what a burner phone is. That, at least, seems credible.* There are libraries filled with what Trump doesn’t know.
“Documents on file with the Select Committee.”
House investigators have by this time assembled so many other records from Jan. 6 players that “Documents on file with the Select Committee” has almost become a running joke in the footnotes of letters sent requesting Trump allies’ testimony. The Committee already knows what you know, members are saying. Don’t try to bullshit us.
Other records in the committee’s possession show Jan. 6 calls between Trump and attorney Rudy Giuliani and former advisor Steve Bannon “before Trump had a final call with [Mike] Pence, in which the vice president told him he was not going to block Congress from formalizing Biden’s victory.” Investigators know Bannon and Trump also conferred late on Jan. 6.
The Washington Post received a lot of “No comments” about this article:
The White House logs also show that Trump had conversations on Jan. 6 with election lawyers and White House officials, as well as outside allies such as then-senator David Perdue (R-Ga.), conservative commentator William J. Bennett and Fox News host Sean Hannity.
Bennett, Hannity and Perdue did not respond to requests for comment.
According to the documents, Trump spoke with other confidants and political advisers that morning ahead of the rally. At 8:34 a.m., he spoke with Kurt Olsen, who was advising Trump on legal challenges to the election.
Trump then placed calls to Sen. Mitch McConnell (Ky.), the Republican leader, and Sen. Josh Hawley (Mo.), but it is unclear whether he reached them, according to the documents. A McConnell aide said Monday that McConnell declined Trump’s call. Hawley, a Trump ally, was the first senator to declare he would object to the certification, a decision that sparked other GOP senators to say they too would object.
The records show that Trump had a 10-minute call starting at 9:24 a.m. with Rep. Jim Jordan, an Ohio Republican who worked closely with the Trump White House and was a key figure in pushing fellow GOP lawmakers to object to the certification of Biden’s election.
Jordan has declined to cooperate with the House committee. The 10-minute call Trump had with Jordan was first reported by CNN.
Giuliani and Trump spoke on Jan. 6 at 9:41 a.m. for six minutes, and at 8:39 p.m. for nine minutes, according to the White House logs. According to the documents, Giuliani called from different phone numbers.
Giuliani did not respond to a request for comment.
Trump senior adviser Stephen Miller – who told Fox News in December 2020 that an “alternate slate of electors in the contested states is going to vote” – spoke with Trump for 26 minutes on the morning of Jan. 6, the records show. That call started at 9:52 a.m. and ended at 10:18 a.m.
Miller did not respond to a request for comment.
Just yesterday, U.S. District Court Judge David Carter ordered attorney John Eastman, one of those principally behind Trump’s scheme for rejecting slates of state electors, to turn over emails records he tried to shield behind attorney-client privilege. “Based on the evidence, the Court finds it more likely than not that President Trump corruptly attempted to obstruct the Joint Session of Congress on January 6, 2021,” Carter wrote. Attorney-client privilege does not apply when the two are committing a crime.
Telephones, computers, cell phones, emails, digital recording, the Internet and cell phone video have made it that much harder to mount a coverup since Watergate.
Technology. It’s come a long way, baby, since 1972.
* Welp, got that wrong.
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