Feb. 10 (UPI) — The House select committee investigating the attack on the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, said there are gaps in the phone logs provided by the White House on the day of the riot, those familiar with the probe said Thursday.
Unnamed sources told CNN, The New York Times and ABC News that the phone records show no entries of calls to or from former President Donald Trump via the White House switchboard despite numerous reports he spoke to lawmakers in the house after the beginning of the attack.
The records don’t indicate there’s been any tampering with the call logs and it’s widely known that Trump often used his personal cellphone — and those belonging to his aides — to make and receive such calls.
Representatives for the committee declined to comment on the record about the gap in phone calls first reported by the Times. A spokesperson for Trump also didn’t respond to a request for comments.
Sources said the logs show no phone calls for multiple hours after Trump returned to the Oval Office after he gave a speech on the 2020 presidential election at the Ellipse. Supporters who attended the speech marched from the park near the White House to the U.S. Capitol, where they attempted to interrupt Congress’ certification of the electoral votes.
The lack of call records comes as Trump faces scrutiny for allegedly violating the Presidential Records Act by ripping up paper records during his time in office.
The National Archives and Records Administration confirmed last month that some of the records turned over to the Jan. 6 committee had been torn and taped back together. Some records that had been torn and not reconstructed were also presented to lawmakers.
During his tenure in the White House, Trump was known for tearing records into shreds, sometimes as small as confetti, and tossing them onto the floor, leaving them for records management analysts to tape back together, Politico reported in 2018.
