White House records released to the House of Representatives show a 7-hour break in Trump’s January 6 telephone magazine

Internal records of the White House from the day of the attack on the US Capitol, which were passed to the House Committee, show a gap in President Donald Trump’s telephone logs at seven hours 37 minutes, including the period when the building was violently attacked, according to documents received by CBS Election and Campaign News Robert Costa and The Washington Post Deputy Editor Bob Woodward.

The lack of official White House statements about any calls made by Trump or Trump within 457 minutes – from 11:17 a.m. to 6:54 p.m. – Jan. 6, 2021, means that there is no record of calls made by Trump as his supporters went down to the US Capitolfought with police and violence entered the building, forcing lawmakers and Vice President Mike Pence to flee to safety.

Eleven pages of records – consisting of the president’s official daily diary and the White House switch log – were handed over to the National Archives earlier this year to the House of Representatives’ selection committee to investigate the January 6 attack.

Records show that Trump was active on the phone during the day, documenting conversations he had with at least eight people in the morning and 11 people that evening. The gap also contrasts sharply with the extensive public reports of telephone conversations he had with allies during the attack.

The chairman of the House of Representatives election committee on January 6, MP Benny Thompson, a Democrat from Mississippi, called a gap in the magazine “relatively.”

“Obviously, there was not a second in a day that the President of the United States was not recorded anywhere,” Thompson told CBS News on Tuesday after signing the bill in the White House. He said the committee would see “if we can put it together”.

“Having a record of what the president was doing that day is absolutely vital to the work of the committee,” Thompson added.

Thompson also said the committee has so far had no evidence that the president was making or receiving calls during that time period, but “when the United States Capitol is seized, someone called. And we just have to find them. “

A House committee is now investigating whether Trump communicated that day through reverse channels, aides ’phones or personal disposable phones known as“ vodka phones, ”according to two people who know about the investigation who, like others, were interviewed for of this report, spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss confidential information. The committee is also examining whether he has received the full journal from that day.

Records show that former White House chief strategist Stephen K. Bannon – who said in his January 5 podcast that “all hell will break out tomorrow” – spoke to Trump twice on January 6.

A representative of the committee declined to comment.

In a statement Monday night, Trump said, “I have no idea what a vodka phone is, as far as I know, I’ve never even heard that term.”

But a former Trump national security adviser John Bolton said in an interview On Tuesday, following the publication of the CBS News-Washington Post, he recalls that Trump used the term “vodka phones” in several discussions, and that Trump knew about its meaning.

Bolton said he and Trump talked about how people used “vodka phones” to avoid checking their calls.

A Trump spokesman said Trump had nothing to do with the recording and believed all of his phone calls had been recorded and saved.

Read more The Washington Post a story co-authored with Costa and Woodward.

Ed O’Keefe and Arden Farhi contributed to this report.