House Jan. 6 committee chair says gap in Trump phone log is "concerning"
The chairman of the Jan. 6 House select committee said a report from CBS News and The Washington Post that records from the day of the attack on the U.S. Capitol show a gap in former President Donald Trump's phone logs of seven hours and 37 minutes is "concerning."
"Obviously, there is not a second in the day that the president of the United States is not on record somewhere," Rep. Bennie Thompson, Democrat from Mississippi, told CBS News on Tuesday after a White House bill signing event. He said the committee would see "if we can piece it together."
"Having a record of what the president was doing on that day is absolutely vital to the work of the committee," Thompson added.
The gap covers 11:17 a.m. to 6:54 p.m. on Jan. 6, meaning there is no record of any calls the president made or received while the Capitol riot was in progress.
Thompson said that the committee does not yet have any evidence that there were calls the president made or received in that time period, but "if the Capitol of the United States is being overrun, somebody made some calls. And we just have to find them."
In its probe of the lengthy gap, the committee is also looking into whether Trump may have used a "burner phone," or a personal disposable phone whose contacts could not be traced.
In a statement, Trump claimed, "I have no idea what a burner phone is, to the best of my knowledge I have never even heard the term."
But John Bolton, Trump's former national security adviser, contradicted the former president's claim. In an interview with CBS News, Bolton claimed Trump had previously used the term "burner phones" in several discussions and said that the former president was aware of the phrase's meaning. He said the two had spoken about how people have used "burner phones" to avoid having their calls scrutinized.
Republican House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy did not directly respond on Tuesday when asked if he had spoken to Trump on a burner phone during the riot. "Burner phone? My phone," he told CBS News, holding up his cell phone.
While the Jan. 6 riot was still unfolding, McCarthy told "CBS Evening News" anchor and managing editor Norah O'Donnell that he had spoken to Trump. "I asked him to talk to the nation and tell them to stop this," McCarthy said at the time. "This is not who we are. We are the beacon of freedom, we show democracy, how we should act. We show the rest of the world and this is not it. I don't know who in the crowd is doing this, I know there is good and bad, this has got to stop."
Thompson told reporters later Tuesday that, "as far as I know, the gap exists. As to why nobody has given us any details on it, it's a concern obviously of the committee but we're still looking."
Thompson was later asked whether the committee has been able to confirm calls that have been publicly reported, but aren't reflected in the logs – such as the one from McCarthy and calls from Sens. Lee and Tuberville.
"We have access to some records. They're not complete. So I won't tell you what we found, but it's part of the investigation," the chairman responded.
Rep. Pete Aguila, who is on the House Jan. 6 committee, said Tuesday morning that "clearly, there's a lot that's missing that deserves the truth."
Zak Hudak, Ellis Kim and Caroline Linton contributed to this report