Why it matters: Although sources said Trump’s already erratic record-keeping operation had virtually collapsed by the last weeks of his presidency, Michael’s absence is a previously unspoken detail that may play a role in explaining the shortcomings. files for a key part of time.
Her absence – combined with the already miserable record-keeping situation at Outer Oval – could also complicate efforts to reunite these details 14 months after that fateful day.
What we hear: Keeping handwritten notes of Trump’s unscheduled meetings and calls was part of Michael’s job when he took over as executive assistant from his predecessor, Madeleine Westerhut.
While Trump was in the Oval Office, in the dining room next to him or in the White House, he preferred to use landlines – although he used his personal cell or received calls in the cells of his close aides, according to sources who saw this. He often shouted “Molly!” to make her call anyone who wanted to speak out of whim.
But Michael, who was sitting just outside the Oval Office, was out on the morning of January 6 for personal reasons.
He arrived at the White House late that afternoon, according to three sources with immediate knowledge of the situation. In her absence, the two officers there during the critical hours of the Capitol siege were Nick Luna, the head of Oval Office Operations, who served as Trump’s body, and Austin Ferrer, a young clerk who assisted Michael in his administration. duties. When Michael arrived late that afternoon, the White House was a “sh-show,” according to an official who was there. Michael, through an intermediary, declined to comment on the story.
Between the lines: Trump’s constant attachment to his phone was legendary. But as the Washington Post and CBS News initially reported, the White House’s call logs provided to the Jan. 6 commission show a gap of more than seven hours in presidential communications.
During the uprising, Trump spent much of his time in the private dining room next to the Oval Office watching television, according to witnesses. The aides came and went as the staff tried to pressure the president to issue a statement condemning the riots at the Capitol. Trump had several well-known telephone conversations that are not recorded in the January 6 commission files, which were first published by the Washington Post. This included calls of intense interest to the committee, including House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy.
How it worked: Usually, every morning, the office of the secretary of staff would leave in the Outer Oval a folder containing the president’s briefing and also a printed private program of his scheduled day. But Trump would break his schedule furiously and repeatedly.
In fact, he had such frequent departures — with the Oval Office sometimes reminiscent of a train station at rush hour — that even during the busiest periods of his presidency, his executive assistants were often absent from meetings and calls. For at least a few years, Westerhout – and later Michael – did everything they could to capture the president’s spontaneous meetings and calls as they appeared all day, according to colleagues who watched them. They wrote, in handwritten notes above the printed private program, with whom the president had spoken that day in addition to his previously scheduled meetings.
The intrigue: Trump reserved some of his most sensitive calls when he was at the White House. For example, a source familiar with the matter told him that Trump would not call Steve Bannon when he was in the Oval Office. Instead, the source said, Trump’s conversations with his controversial former chief of staff – recorded in the Post’s call logs – were from home. At the end of each day, Trump’s aides at Outer Oval went to the president’s private program that day – along with their handwritten notes – to the Secretary of State’s office.
These notes were then sent to keep official records – part of the White House staff’s obligation under the 1978 Presidential Records Act. The law on the preservation of presidential records is considered extensive and includes the preservation of emails, text messages and telephone records regardless of the device used, presidential historian Lindsay Chervinsky told the Associated Press.
But, but, but: The law depends to a large extent on the good faith of the presidents and their staff. No president has ever been punished for violating the law on presidential records.
“Implementing this act is really important, because there is no real enforcement mechanism,” Martha Kumar, co-founder and director of the White House Transition Project, told Axios. “It depends on the goodwill of the president; if the president wants to avoid keeping records, then there is a way to do it.”
Trump has tested this good faith more than any other president in recent memory. He often tore up documents, letting career staff re-glue them together to keep records. Papers were even found clogging the toilets at the White House, according to the New York Times’ Maggie Haberman.
In early 2020, when COVID-19 hit the United States and the wheels began to fall from Trump’s re-election bid, his White House was flooded even more than usual with chaos. The already occasional record keeping fell away.
Sources with immediate knowledge of the situation said that Axios Michael started to receive less and less files from the scheduled meetings and calls of the president.
Staff began to question the value of this type of record keeping. Two former officials said Outer Oval’s staff were not well served by their superiors and were never properly informed of their critical work responsibilities. At least once, during the first year of Trump’s presidency, the White House Adviser’s Office issued a stern warning about their obligation to maintain a broad and detailed account of the president’s moves, actions and communications, according to a source with immediate knowledge.
The bottom line: One of the biggest challenges for legal requirements was the routine use of cell phones by the President or his assistants to make and receive calls.
So far, such calls on January 6 have remained out of the public domain.
