Gap in Trump call logs on January 6 was ‘suspiciously tailored’, Rep Jamie Raskin says

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The gap in phone logs in the official White House records on January 6, 2021, is of "intense interest" to the House select committee investigating the attack on the US Capitol, Representative Jamie B. Raskin said Sunday.

In an interview on CBS News’s "Face the Nation," Raskin, a Democrat from Maryland, noted that a 7-and-a-half hour gap in the phone logs for President Donald Trump’s communications that day covers the period when the Capitol assault was taking place.

Raskin said he and other January 6 committee members have been able to piece together some of Trump’s activities during that time frame based on other people’s interviews and depositions, but holes remain.

"It’s a very unusual thing for us to find that suddenly everything goes dark for a seven-hour period in terms of tracking the movements and the conversations of the president," Raskin said.

When asked if the gap could possibly be due to incompetence rather than conspiracy, Raskin said the committee was taking that into account. He added, however, that "the gaps are suspiciously tailored to the heart of the events" of January 6, including when several lawmakers later said they were pleading with Trump to intervene.

Raskin noted that the committee was aware that the president took part in calls during that time, "but we have no comprehensive, fine-grained portrait of what was going on during that period, and that’s obviously of intense interest to us."

The bipartisan January 6 panel is investigating the 2021 storming of the US Capitol by a pro-Trump mob that tried to stop the confirmation of Joe Biden’s electoral college win. The attack led to five deaths and left some 140 members of law enforcement injured.

Trump has tried to assert executive privilege to withhold documents from the committee, which last year ordered the former president to provide records of all his actions and activities on January 6. President Biden has rejected Trump’s claims of executive privilege.

Earlier this year, the National Archives and Records Administration turned over to the committee 11 pages of White House records from that day, including the president’s official daily diary and the White House switchboard call logs.

As first reported by The Washington Post and CBS News, those records did not include any documentation of calls placed to or by Trump from 11.17 am to 6.54 pm on January 6, 2021.

Raskin added that the committee’s mission is to get "a complete picture" of everything that took place on January 6, as well as what needs to be done "to fortify democratic institutions and processes against future insurrections and coups and attempts to destabilize and overthrow our elections."

Raskin said he hoped the committee would be able to begin holding long-delayed public hearings in May and was looking for connections between the violent insurrection at the Capitol and what he called the "attempt at an inside coup" orchestrated by Trump against the Constitution.

"I do feel confident we’re going to be able to tell that story," Raskin said, adding, "Obviously, we’re up against a lot of obstruction now."

Last week, the committee voted to hold two more former Trump aides - former trade and manufacturing director Peter Navarro and former communications chief Daniel Scavino Jr. - in criminal contempt of Congress for refusing to comply with the committee’s subpoenas. Raskin said the House probably would vote this week on whether to refer Navarro and Scavino to the Justice Department for prosecution.

Like Trump and a raft of other former aides, Navarro and Scavino have tried to claim they are protected by executive privilege and that the subpoenas were an overreach by the committee. They are among the latest in high-profile Trump White House officials facing repercussions for refusing to comply with the January 6 committee’s subpoenas.

Last year, former Trump adviser Stephen K. Bannon was indicted on charges of contempt of Congress, which prompted warnings from some Republicans of "payback" that they could do the same to Democrats if they retake control of the House majority in November.

Mark Meadows, a former chief of staff in the Trump White House, also refused to cooperate with the committee, leading to the House voting to hold him in contempt of Congress as well in December.

Separately, a federal judge ruled last week that Trump "more likely than not" committed federal crimes in attempting to stop the confirmation of Biden’s electoral college win.

Asked about the judge’s comments Sunday, Senator Roy Blunt, a Republican of Missouri who has defended Trump frequently and who voted to acquit Trump during his impeachment trials, was noncommittal.

"Well, federal judges say a lot of things and we’ll see how that comes through the process," Blunt said on ABC News’s "This Week." "I think the Justice Department has a job to do and they should do it and people who were involved in the planning or execution of illegal activities on Jan. 6 should be prosecuted."