In fact, there is no record of activity between 13:21 and 16:03, when the violence at the Capitol peaked. It has been widely reported that Trump spoke with allies such as Senators Mike Lee and Tommy Tamberville and with House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy during the attack. By law, the president and White House officials are required to “adequately document” and maintain records of the president’s “activities, discussions, decisions, and policies.” This responsibility was enshrined in the 1978 Presidential Registers Act. Typically, a president’s appeals and actions throughout the day will be recorded in the Presidential Diary (PDD), a document compiled by White House calendars based on a variety of sources. Calendars are almost never eyewitnesses to presidential events, so their job is to merge telephone records provided by the White House call center operator, handwritten notes from the president’s closest aides, secret service logs, and a detailed , secret version of the president’s program. White House calendars have the highest level of security certification. They are paid by the National Archives, but are considered non-partisan White House staffers who often work in Republican and Democratic presidencies. The people with whom Mr. Trump spoke on January 6, 2021 and what they discussed has become the main focus of the members of the cross-party selection committee of the House that is in charge of investigating the Capitol uprising. President Bennie Thompson told CBS News on Tuesday that the commission had not received any additional records regarding the seven hours that had not been recorded. “We just have to find them,” he said. The January 6 call log shows that Trump made multiple calls through White House operators in the morning – before the Capitol attack. He made more calls later that afternoon. But it is not clear why there are no phone records from Trump on the afternoon of January 6th. If Trump had used the White House distribution board to connect with people, the logs of White House operators would have been sorted into classified and non-classified logs at the end of the day, raising questions about whether Complete call logs from the afternoon were retrieved from the calendars that day. Former White House officials told CBS News that the president regularly used his own cell phone or received calls on the cell phones of his close aides, such as Deputy Chief of Staff Dan Scavino and personal assistant Nick Luna.
Luna appeared before the commission for questioning earlier this month, according to reports. The possible use of non-government telephones or auxiliary telephones by Trump — or even unregistered “burning telephones” – on Jan. 6 prompted the commission to investigate whether Trump made or received any calls to avoid being noted in official presidential records. provided to the diarists, according to two people with research knowledge. The former president said in a statement that he had no idea what a “light telephone” was, but that John Bolton, who served as Trump’s national security adviser, told CBS that he and Trump had talked about how people have used “burning phones”. to avoid controlling their calls. On Monday, Parliament’s select committee recommended that Scavino be held in contempt of Congress for failing to comply with the committee’s summons. Scavino, Trump’s longtime social media aide and confidant, has refused to work with the commission, citing Trump’s claim of executive privilege.
A former Trump administration official described the Trump White House record-keeping process as follows: Most days, if the president was talking to someone on a call that was not being routed through the White House distribution panel, the executive assistant made a handwritten note to him. in his private program. Page of the program of then President Donald Trump in the White House, January 6, 2021. At the end of the day, this commented program, with any notes on additional activity, would then be passed on to the White House staff secretary. The documents were then handed over to a White House archivist and from there delivered to the diary to be added to the PDD. If there were additional presidential calls on the afternoon of January 6, it is not clear if they were lost in the chain of records – or if they never occurred. “Sure, things got lost,” said a former Trump White House official who knows the process of the files, adding that sometimes handwritten notes were sent directly to the diary. This official, as well as others who were interviewed about this story, asked to remain anonymous in order to speak honestly about their time in the Trump administration. Another former official said “there is no case” these calls were “accurately located”, but could not say if this was intentional. “It was messy.” During the last months of the administration, Molly Michael served as Trump’s executive aide and sat just outside the Oval Office. Derek Lyons, the secretary of staff, had announced his intention to leave the White House before January 6. Phillip Droege was the top file manager. Neither Lyons nor Droege responded to requests for comment. Michael’s lawyer also did not respond to a request for comment. Axios reported that Michael was not at work for most of the day on January 6th. Call logs – either from White House operators or handwritten notes by a Trump aide – are provided in White House calendars at the end of the day, along with other information. In previous governments, the only people with access to this documentation for the calendars were the president, chief of staff and secretary of staff, a former White House diary told CBS News. It is not clear who was given access to the White House. The former diary told CBS News that a PDD could be 30 pages or larger, with entries that included who the president met or spoke with, where he was and who others were present. “Literally every minute was counted,” said the former diary. The details “were excruciatingly painful.” Trump’s January 6 PDD appears to be just five pages long, based on what was provided to the National Archives and then to the January 6 committee. Aside from the lack of documentation of any calls on the afternoon of January 6, the PDD – which is usually written and finalized by calendars in the following days – does not reflect who Trump was with that afternoon. After the president returned from his speech at the rally, which was close to the White House, the detail in the PDD is sparse. The daily diary notes that Trump entered the Oval Office at 1:19 p.m., spoke with his “Vale” at 1:21 p.m., and then went to the Garden of the Roses two hours and 42 minutes later. It is unclear whether anyone took notes on who was with Trump or whether notes were taken but not delivered for inclusion in the daily diary. Probably complicating any attempt to complete the January 6 daily calendar was the handover of power that would take place later that month, on January 20th. The White House calendars need to cross-reference and finalize the day’s events, the former White House’s diary explained, so if there are unknown time gaps during a president’s day, the diary will probably look for the information later, so gaps can be filled, a process that can take days. Even if the calendars were not able to get all the information they needed to complete the January 6 calendar until President Biden was sworn in on January 20, they would have to submit the calendar as it was, along with all the White Papers. Trump House were transferred to the archives. The former blogger said that it would be difficult to imagine a scenario in which there are no records, because there are always many different entities in the White House that simultaneously record what the president does all day. The former diary suggested that deliberately hiding files would probably require coordination with various entities – “The Secret Service will accompany you, this means that the White House operator must accompany you, this means that Usher’s office must accompany you. ” CBS News contacted some of the aides and allies listed in the daily diary who spoke with Trump before and after the seven-hour break in telephone records. He spoke with Sen. David Pardew, a Republican in Georgia, about the re-election for the Georgia Senate, according to a source familiar with their appeal. Perdue had lost the second round to Raphael Warnock a day earlier, on January 5th. The president tried to contact Senator Josh Hawley, but they did not contact him that day. Later that night, he spoke with outside attorneys Rudy Giuliani and Cleta Mitchell, both of whom were working to overturn the outcome of the 2020 election. Robert Costa, Rob Legare and Adam Brewster contributed to this story.

Attack on the US Capitol

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