During the nearly nine hours Congress was hacked on January 6, 2021, the official White House call logs showed that former President Donald Trump did not make a single phone call. And while historians may consider the loss of the call log a crime to commemorate historical inaccuracies, it could also actually advance the planned criminal case against Trump. .
“The first thing that comes to mind is the Nixon tape, 18 minutes is missing. It’s never been resolved,” said American University professor Chris Edelson, who studies presidential power.
Edelson was referring to the Watergate scandal that brought down President Richard Nixon, who taped White House discussions about covering up the theft but conveniently erased 18 and a half minutes of damned conversations. that curse—which greatly annoyed federal investigators.
Trump — who was impeached a second time for inciting the January 6, 2021 uprising and is now facing an extremely secret Justice Department investigation — is now in a similar position. .
“Exactly… all you can surmise is that for nefarious reasons this particular president is not,” said Barbara Ann Perry, a professor of presidential studies at the University of Virginia. want any records kept.”
The gap began at 11:04 a.m. that day, when an incoming call was recorded from then-Senator David Perdue (R-GA) with the attached note, “Talking okay.” The next entry appeared almost eight hours later at 6:54 p.m., when Trump asked the operator of the switch to call his social media director. “POTUS instructed operator to call back Mr. Dan Scavino,” it wrote.
From that point on, employees write President Trump’s Daily Diary and switchboard call logs both record what happens next. About 22 minutes later, the operator told Trump that he had pending calls from all the men and women of the president who had supported his coup plot. in many different ways. List includes Kurt Olsenan attorney who tried to use the nation’s courts to overturn the election results, Mark Martin, the former chief justice of the North Carolina Supreme Court who advised him on those frivolous lawsuits, and Cleta Mitchella lawyer joined Trump in his threatening call to Georgia’s top election official in a failed attempt to get him to falsify the vote count.
Also in line are Senator Bill Hagerty (R-TN) and Senator Josh Hawley (R-MO). According to the diary, Trump received calls from lawyers but declined calls from senators.
Call logs and logs show that Trump spoke to Olson for 11 minutes starting at 7:17 p.m., then Martin for 9 minutes, then Olson again for another 10, then Mitchell for 2 minute.
But similar to Nixon, there is ample evidence that former President Donald Trump did indeed have cursed conversations that are not reflected in official records. Representative Kevin McCarthy (R-CA), Congressman Jim Jordan (R-OH) and Senator Tommy Tuberville (R-AL) both admitted to talking on the phone with the former president during the harrowing hours of the afternoon attack, but the White House switchboard is often used for official calls. does not reflect any of those calls. It’s not clear what phone he used to make these calls, but Trump has been known to sometimes use aides’ mobile devices or even his own cell phones.
“Yes, this is the missing evidence of presidential misconduct,” Perry told The Daily Beast. “This will be part of that story. Why is he hiding this?”
The files, which were turned over by the National Archives to the House of Representatives’ January 6 committee investigating the uprising under President Joe Biden’s current administration, were released Monday ahead of the convention. 117th time.
“We may never find out. It is certainly strange to say the least. We know that Trump is talking to people this time around,” Edelson said.
Long before the uprising, Trump had a troubled history with official presidential recordskeeping — a particularly ironic point given that he took to the White House by berating Hillary Clinton about She uses a private email server suspiciously while in public office. Famous Trump aides had to get back together the document he tore upand administrative officials came use encrypted device app to text each other the messages disappear.
But over the years, Trump has also developed a distaste for the official White House switchboard, dramatized by his own staff’s efforts to rein him in. General John F. Kelly, the Marine who served as Trump’s chief of staff for most of the first half of his presidency, would secretly spy on his boss’s calls, according to a book was published last year by Trump White House adviser and son-in-law Jared Kushner.
When Trump was later told that Kelly had been doing it for months, he was flabbergasted.
Kushner recalls Trump saying, “What did Kelly do?” and ordered the employee to “finish it immediately.” At the time, Kelly’s soon-to-be replacement, Mick Mulvaney, asked Trump to sign a document that “will stop Kelly from starting to listen to all your phone calls.”
Mulvaney’s replacement, Mark Meadows, later severely restricted White House officials being able to access those call logs, according to the report. CNN. By then, however, Trump had gotten used to avoiding the official White House switchboard by cutting landline calls short and instructing contacts to call him directly by cell phone, CNN reported. believe.
Meadows remained at Trump’s right hand in late 2020, as he played a pivotal role in trying to keep his boss in power despite losing the general election. Meadows, who helped found the House Freedom Caucus as a congressman, has called on former colleagues in that far-right group of Republicans to assist in a plot to prevent Congress from confirming the results of the national electoral college. family. Much of what we know now about the plan comes from the emails and text messages he sent to the House of Representatives January 6 Committee, which this week released documents it has released. amassed during the investigation — including the White House call logs.
The missing information has annoyed congressional investigators, and Representatives on the nine-member panel often complain about the Trump administration’s lack of transparency when it comes to recording the events of that day.
But the eight-hour gap in phone logs may just be a speed bump for the Justice Department, which is now looking into efforts to reverse Trump’s election as part of a larger investigation into the allegations. Various criminal actions of the former president. That’s because FBI agents can use subpoenas to quietly collect phone numbers for McCarthy, Jordan, Tuberville, and anyone else who spoke to Trump during those hours to find the phone. who at the White House made those calls.
“Payments records never really go away. Can it be used against him? Sure. It can be seen as proof of the state of mind. It’s relatively weak evidence, but it does suggest something—that you’re staying away from certain contacts,” noted Benjamin Wittes, editor-in-chief of the national security legal blog Lawfare.
If the Justice Department makes the historic but predictable decision to indict the former president, a key challenge will be to prove that Trump knows what he did was wrong. Political scientists who spoke with The Daily Beast wondered if the call logs would be as harmful to Trump as the deleted tapes were to Nixon — especially if federal prosecutors determined that Trump’s criminal intentions are evidenced by his taking steps to knowingly avoid making an official government record of damning phone calls to key lawmakers who have backed his revolt.
But there’s another dimension to Trump’s missed calls to the White House: the manner in which this has frustrated historians whose mission is to give future Americans a clear picture. clear on how this president has tried to damage the nation’s democracy.
“The White House switchboard is highly regarded in historical documents,” said Andrew Rudalevige, Bowdoin University provost scholar, who emphasized the importance of these types of records.
“I have no doubt he was discussing the most unflattering things at the time,” he said.
But political scientists stress that the lost records are more than evidence of a potential crime — they serve as a stark reminder of how far down the Trump administration was before it was released. shameful go.
“One thing we tend to forget about Trump is how strange, unusual, unprecedented, and unpresidential his tenure is. ‘Normalization’ is a real thing. People have accepted things that in any other presidency people would consider illegal,” Edelson said. “This is wonderful.”
Perry, a University of Virginia professor, noted that the incoming Congress is now in the same position as Congress after Nixon’s resignation. In 1978, four years after Nixon left the White House, lawmakers passed the Presidential Records Act to prevent future presidents from withholding or destroying records documenting their time in office. But that law has proven too weak to stop, archivists and historians say. Democrats reeling from Trump’s lawlessness will support tougher accountability measures. And the Republicans, who continue to bring charges against the Biden administration — and now have a majority in the House — would be wise to join them.
“I would hope that under normal circumstances Congress would act and say, if nothing else, presidents must keep records of their phone calls. Right now I don’t think there is such a law,” she said.
