The Washington Post and CBS obtained records turned over to the January 6 Committee that show a seven and a half hour gap of Trump’s phone log records.
The Select Committee has no record of his phone conversations as his supporters descended on the Capitol, battled overwhelmed police and forcibly entered the building, prompting lawmakers and Vice President Mike Pence to flee for safety.
Eleven pages of records including Trump’s official daily diary and the White House switchboard call logs were turned over to the committee earlier this year.
The records revealed Trump made calls to eight people in the morning and 11 people that evening, but shows none of the publicly reported calls made to Republican allies including Tommy Tuberville, Mike Lee, and Kevin McCarthy.
The House panel is now investigating whether Trump communicated that day through backchannels, phones of aides or personal disposable phones, known as “burner phones.”
In a statement Monday night, Trump said, “I have no idea what a burner phone is, to the best of my knowledge I have never even heard the term.”
The documents obtained by the committee show Trump having several previously unreported exchanges on Jan. 6, including brief calls with Bannon and personal lawyer Rudy Giuliani that morning, before Trump had a final call with Pence, in which the vice president told him he was not going to block Congress from formalizing Biden’s victory. The call to the vice president was part of Trump’s attempt to put into motion a plan, advocated by Bannon and outlined in a memo written by conservative lawyer John Eastman, that would enable Trump to hold on to the presidency, as first reported in the book “Peril.”