The House Jan. 6 committee received White House call logs that included a more than seven-hour gap in former President Donald Trump’s phone calls during the Capitol riot, according to a joint report from The Washington Post’s Bob Woodward and CBS News’ Bob Costa.
The White House phone logs, which were turned over to the committee by the National Archives, show no calls made by Trump between 11:17 am and 6:54 pm despite previously reported conversations that Trump had with House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy and Sens. Mike Lee and Tommy Tuberville throughout the day.
The House committee is now investigating whether Trump used backchannels, phones of aides, or “burner phones.”
One lawmaker told the outlet the committee is investigating a “possible coverup” of White House records.
Another person close to the committee said there is “intense interest” in the gap.
Trump pushes back:
Trump in a statement said that he is unaware of burner phones.
"I have no idea what a burner phone is, to the best of my knowledge I have never even heard the term,” he claimed.
A Trump spokeswoman told the reporters that Trump had “nothing to do with the records and has assumed any and all of his phone calls were recorded and preserved.”
Legal experts warn of trouble:
Former federal prosecutor Elie Honig told CNN that the gap coincided with the events in the Capitol.
"That's what jumps out to me here," he explained. "If you look at the pattern, using the normal White House phone subject to the logs all morning, all up until 11:17 a.m. Then he stopped. And it looks like he made a decision I'm going to take this offline for the next 7 1/2 hours. To me, that's really compelling evidence of his state of mind."
Fellow former prosecutor Renato Mariotti said the potential use of burner phones in the White House also raises questions.
"I used to get wiretaps on phones when I was a federal prosecutor and the folks that use burner phones were usually drug dealers, people who were involved in the drug cartel in some way," he said. "People who knew they had to toss their phone every 30 days to try to stymie the efforts of people like myself and law enforcement. So, I think it would certainly be astounding if something like that happened.”
