March 29, 2022

"The lack of an official White House notation of any calls placed to or by Trump for 457 minutes on Jan. 6, 2021 – from 11:17 a.m. to 6:54 p.m. – means the 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.... The House panel is now investigating whether Trump communicated that day through backchannels, phones of aides or personal disposable phones, known as 'burner phones,' according to two people with knowledge of the probe, who, like others interviewed for this report, spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss sensitive information."

From "Jan. 6 White House logs given to House show 7-hour gap in Trump calls/The House select committee is now investigating whether it has the full record and whether Trump communicated that day through backchannels, phones of aides or personal disposable phones, according to people familiar with the probe" by Bob Woodward and Robert Costa (Washington Post). 

Bob Woodward — his name on the article evokes the Watergate scandal and its famous gap — the 18-and-a-half gap in the Nixon tapes. Who did it?!

One indelible image sums up the lameness of the official explanation:

69 comments:

rhhardin said...

I myself had no calls during that period.

tim in vermont said...

There was a loyal woman.

iowan2 said...

Just a farm boy, so. What is the controversy? We all know what acceptable communication looks like.
Just like this.
Back channels are the sign of sophistication. Not, obfuscation.

tim in vermont said...

Of course there will be no investigation into the decision to decline the National Guard protection that Trump offered. Just like we won't talk about how Trump tried to get Europeans to use US natural gas, which would have come in quite handy, right now. Now it's a year away. Could have been done. J6 could have been avoided too, had we but listened to Trump.

Mike (MJB Wolf) said...

Seven hours? That’s nothing. Joe disappears for three days every week-end and I bet there’s yuge gaps in “communication” involved.

David Begley said...

Last night I heard Lawerence O’Donnell on MSNBC claim that both Ginni and Clarence Thomas committed crimes regarding J6. He started his show by quoting from a federal judge in the Navarro case. The Left never stops.

There is, however, a reasonable (albeit unprecedented) legal theory that some of the state certifications could have been remanded back to the states for reexamination.

The Left doesn’t get irony. They want Biden in there because he stole the election fair and square. With Biden, we have a senile old man who has totally bungled everything. Klain and Rice can’t stop Joe from screwing up.

Prediction. Biden will be removed before the year ends. Twenty-fifth Amendment. He will fail the SLUMS test.

David Begley said...

Hey, Woodward and Costa! How about a transcript of Biden’s two hour call with Xi?

tim maguire said...

The fishing expedition will not end until November, but it won't help the Democrats. Who but a blind left-wing partisan could fail to notice that this is the one and only time since the Haymarket Riot that the government tried to hold a politician responsible for crimes committed during a protest they were nowhere near?

Especially coming so soon after the BLM/Antifa riots that so many Democrats supported. Not enough time has gone by to bury this hypocrisy.

Tom T. said...

Tacit admission that at this point they have nothing to pin on him, right?

RideSpaceMountain said...

The absence of evidence is not the evidence of absence.

For instance, we still don't have Hillary Clinton's emails on her toilet server. Truly a candidate for Unsolved Mysteries.

gilbar said...

overwhelmed police and forcibly entered the building

okay, Let's Play!
WHY were the police 'overwhelmed'? WHOSE fault, was That??
HOW was it that the mostly peaceful protesters 'forcibly entered'? WHOSE fault, was THAT??

Did Trump refuse Nancy's requests for more security? Did Trump order police to open the doors?
Because.. IF HE DID, than this is a REAL STORY!

Beasts of England said...

I’m sure these burner phone accusations will distract the public from runaway inflation, right?

Wince said...

Wasn't Trump still speaking at the rally when the incursion took place?

Doesn't video of that rally explain where Trump was and what he said, and would therefore narrow the span of the alleged gap to exclude the most relevant period?

wendybar said...

I don't trust Bob Woodard, or anybody in Government, after the intel agencies joined with Progressives to actively try to take down a duly elected President for his whole term. I want to see Nancy's phone records.

Owen said...

Wait: THE Bob Woodward? I thought he was dead, or at least settled in a nursing home and pushing a walker. But here he is: still on the case, still finding sinister meaning in silence, still pawing at gaps in the official record, still receiving stolen goods in the form of unauthorized and illegal disclosures.

Pass the popcorn.

MartyH said...

Over an hour in the middle of that gap is explained by Trump’s rally, so really there are two shorter time periods in question.

Heartless Aztec said...

What a decent man done wrong.

Mr Wibble said...

We're supposed to believe that Trump and his associates concocted a complex plan to organize a riot in order to overthrow the election, but couldn't simply figure out how to stuff ballot boxes in the right counties to ensure that he won the election?

Browndog said...

Lack of evidence is all the evidence you need to prove conspiracy to conceal criminal activity.

Hundreds, if not thousands of prosecutors and judges, even a few on the Supreme Court, would agree this doctrine is enough to charge, even convict Donald J. Trump.

Birches said...

Lame is what the committee is doing. We've got Trump tweets during that gap and all sorts of text messages, but the WaPo is desperate to make readers imagine that there is no official communication from the president for over 6 hours. That's a lie.

Did someone call Meadows, who gave the phone to Trump? Very possible. But it's also equally possible that no one answered the phone and everything was in writing.

Mr Wibble said...

The fishing expedition will not end until November, but it won't help the Democrats. Who but a blind left-wing partisan could fail to notice that this is the one and only time since the Haymarket Riot that the government tried to hold a politician responsible for crimes committed during a protest they were nowhere near?

I believe that the goal is to create just enough fake dirt that blue-state officials can use in 2024 to deny Trump ballot access.

iowan2 said...

but the WaPo is desperate to make readers imagine that there is no official communication from the president for over 6 hours.

Secretary of State...Benghazi.

Nuff said.

Brian said...

I believe that the goal is to create just enough fake dirt that blue-state officials can use in 2024 to deny Trump ballot access.

That would put a lie to the "popular vote" narrative wouldn't it?

Iman said...

Carl Bernstein says this is worse than Watergate.

He likes to trot that out, on a daily basis.

campy said...

"... it won't help the Democrats."

No, but the massive fraud machine sure will.

Temujin said...

One on hand, they've got a laptop loaded with actual verifiable information showing a President's son arranging payoffs from foreign nationals and governments for access to and influence on the then Vice President, now President. These are backed up by verifiable witnesses who know of the payments, and strongly suggest that the 'Big Guy' is Joe Biden himself.

But that was/is not only ignored, it was censored.

On the other hand, we're getting visions of Mike Pence and Nancy Pelosi running away from angry middle aged women, a man claiming to be a shaman wearing a Buffalo head, and hundreds of others unarmed 'insurrectionists' invited in and escorted through open doors by the Capitol Police. Except of course for the one Capitol Policeman who murdered one of the unarmed women trying to enter.

Nothing much to report on there.

Bob Woodward's name still carries. Not sure why any longer.

Ann Althouse said...

The arm of Rosemary's chair gives her the look of having an hourglass figure.

I'd never noticed that before, perhaps because I've always seen the picture in black and white. Newspapers didn't run color photos back in those days.

The NYT stuck to black and white until 1997!

"There was... a great fear that color could distort a paper’s news value or create the wrong emphasis on a newspaper’s front page."

tim in vermont said...

"Joe disappears for three days every week-end"

No visitor's logs from Delaware, either.

Owen said...

Good to know that the NYT was zealous in its mission to find and speak the Truth. But what altered its thinking in 1997? Can we hear about the science that supports the claim that color is OK? Or --more likely-- the Times learned that its remaining readership likes pictures, not words; and brightly colored pictures at that.

Regarding the Mystery of the Missing Minutes --lack of official record for hours and hours on J6-- the beauty of such a story is that its center is by definition empty: it's a cast of characters creating a commotion about what isn't there. The stage swirls with noisy activity --people declaring that X must be so, other people angrily rejecting that and proposing Y, on and on; while center stage is without form or color. You can assign it any meaning at all; and the Dems and their media friends will be doing exactly that, enthusiastically, as the exorcism of Orange Man goes on and on.

Leland said...

Let just remember we do have phone call evidence that Nancy Pelosi, a member of the Legislative Branch, called the JCS on Jan. 8th and told them to ignore orders from the Constitution designated Commander and Chief of the US. JCS then called the Xi in China to tell that foreign leader that he would warn him if Trump acted against China. Trump was still the duly elected President at the time, and his legislature and military command decided to usurp Executive Branch authority.

Browndog said...

We've got Trump tweets during that gap

Odd, isn't it?

Trump tweets stay peaceful, then "go home". twitter immediately removed the tweets, locked his account, then banned him. He was never really able to publicly state his side of the story, and never really spoke about J6 for many months.

Well, outside of attacking Pence.

Achilles said...

Hillary Clinton deleted over 33000 emails.

Each one of those emails sends a normal serviceman to jail. But Hillary gets off scott free and goes to the bank with billions of dollars she took in bribes from foreign countries.

But yeah 7 hours of phone calls that these regime toadies were unable to illegally spy on.

Democrats and their pet GOPe co-traitors are just evil hypocritical people.

So is anyone that supports this regime.

Christopher B said...

The phone that didn't ring.

narciso said...

its not like this committee has a habit of deleting or omitting evidence, is it,

rcocean said...

There's no official log. They already know there were phone calls due to TESTIMONY. A democrat Presient in Trump's place would've simply smashed all the cell phones and computers. Y'know, like Hillary.

The witch hunt continues, but this one has a reason. There are already enough Leftist stooges and DNC Operatives in the Federal Judiciary, and Joe Biden and his DoJ would LOVE to go after Trump, a Republican. So, look for criminal charges against Trump to be filed.

Probably before the mid-terms.

This isn't how things are supposed to work. This is the current POTUS helping the Congress destroy the Executive branch's power. But Democrats NEVER care about anything but hurting those Goddamn Republicans. They love that even more than $Graft$.

narciso said...

these bastards have brought us to the brink of nuclear war, to famine to rolling blackouts, to mass unrest, and they still won't stop, water buffalo man, should have gutted them with a barge pole

William50 said...

Achilles said...

Hillary Clinton deleted over 33000 emails.

Not only that but I believe they had been subpoenaed prior to being deleted.

Old and slow said...

I'm a (belated) strong Trump supporter, but an empty stretch in the call logs does make one wonder why. Now do Hillary's 33,000 missing emails...

tim maguire said...

campy said..."... it won't help the Democrats."

No, but the massive fraud machine sure will.


Republicans dropped the ball in 2020. If the Democrats pull it off again in 2024, the Republicans will deserve to have gotten swindled.

Browndog said...

You see how they moved the bar?

All they need to prove Trump conspired to overthrow the government is evidence of 1 phone call in a 7 hour window.

I'll say it again--there is no way in hell Trump will be "allowed" to be President again. Gotta get past this romantic notion that America is the America of our youth.

narciso said...

they are grasping at paper straws, while yelling squirrel,

Browndog said...

Another "leak" from a democrat investigation into Trump, and we take it at face value?

Have we learned nothing?

Mr Wibble said...

Republicans dropped the ball in 2020. If the Democrats pull it off again in 2024, the Republicans will deserve to have gotten swindled.

GOP leadership wanted Trump gone, so they stepped aside.

narciso said...

https://www.breitbart.com/politics/2022/03/28/contempt-charge-against-dan-scavino-based-on-false-claims-by-january-6-committee/

mikee said...

I still await an explanation of how, exactly, protesters in the Capitol Building would receive anything Trump woulda, coulda, shoulda said. Were they all reading tweets during their violent armed insurrection? On a Trumpian speed dial? Able to hear voices in their heads when Trump wanted to communicate?

Douglas B. Levene said...

If the Committee wants to prove that Trump conspired with the rioters to invade the Capitol Building and force Congress and Pence to install Trump as president, then they should be looking at phone records before January 6. What happened on January 6 has little probative value for the existence of a conspiracy formed prior to then to invade the Capitol Building.

Iman said...

“The NYT stuck to black and white until 1997!”

The NYT can stick it. Just sayin’…

Joe Smith said...

Just for the record, Woodward is a world-class, partisan cocksucker who would be an obscure figure if not for the vindictiveness of Mark Felt, who fed him the story.

The republicans need to seize all of Pelosi's records, Capitol Police communications, the DC Mayor's communications, National Guard communications, and all FBI communications related to January 6.

And they need to make it all publicly accessible with no redactions.

Joe Smith said...

'Seven hours? That’s nothing. Joe disappears for three days every week-end and I bet there’s yuge gaps in “communication” involved.'

I have yet to hear an explanation for the disappearance of Obama during the critical hours of the Benghazi attack...

Michael K said...

If I remember correctly, Trump was speaking to a crowd when the Jan 6 protestors were entering the capitol. Why would he be on a phone ?

wendybar said...

No mikee...They turned off the cell service, so there WAS no direction.....other than the FBI using walkie talkies to direct other agents where to go to make it look really bad. They are TRYING to blame Trump when they SHOULD be blaming Pelosi for not allowing the National Guard that TRUMP requested for that day. Ask yourself WHY she would do that, when supposedly there were "credible sources" that this was planned. Planned by the FBI and Nancy Pelosi, if you ask me.

MadTownGuy said...

"...battled overwhelmed police and forcibly entered the building, prompting lawmakers and Vice President Mike Pence to flee for safety.... The House panel is now investigating whether Trump communicated that day through backchannels, phones of aides or personal disposable phones, known as 'burner phones,' according to two people with knowledge of the probe, who, like others interviewed for this report, spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss sensitive information."

They forgot to look for secret routers.

Mark said...

"If I remember correctly, Trump was speaking to a crowd when the Jan 6 protestors were entering the capitol"

They broke down the initial fences outside, but based on timeliness I found were not into the building until well after he was done speaking.

wendybar said...

They forgot to look for secret routers.

They were at Hillary's house....in her bathroom.

n.n said...

The republicans need to seize all of Pelosi's records, Capitol Police communications, the DC Mayor's communications, National Guard communications, and all FBI communications related to January 6.

And they need to make it all publicly accessible with no redactions.


That would indeed be a novel upset of the Watergate political mythology, dispel diverse handmade tales, and lift the privacy shield from greater violations of public and private trust that engender a low trust society as a first-order forcing of [catastrophic] [anthropogenic] climate change and dysfunctional evolution.

n.n said...

battled overwhelmed police and forcibly entered the building

Congress denied executive assistance, denied representation of the People assembled, the police extended an invitation, summarily pulled the rug, forced the disorder ("riot"), and elected to abort an unarmed woman after she attempted to calm the situation but withdrew in resignation from the progressive confusion, a probable Whitmer conspiracy, but not as a cover-up to planned parent/hood.

The Cracker Emcee Refulgent said...

"Tacit admission that at this point they have nothing to pin on him, right?"

Yes. We've seen this one so many times since 2016 that I'm genuinely starting to believe that the cognitive dissonance required to be a Democrat is driving them to madness. Seriously, the amount of doublethink required must carry some kind of mental health toll. Willfully and consistently blur reality and eventually it will do it with no effort on their part.

boatbuilder said...

Obviously those buffalo horns were transmitters for a direct line of communication with Trump.

Maybe someone should find out who Ray Epps was talking to during that time.

Christopher B said...

Phone calls are synchronous and a group phone call, as we all know from participating in two years of Zoom meetings, is a goat rodeo at best. You can have multiple one-to-one text conversations at the same time, and even group texts are manageable since you can always scroll back for context.

Iman said...

Browndog @9:59… all true. This is not America.

Bushman of the Kohlrabi said...

Trump obviously wiped his log with Hillary’s cloth…

(Sorry in advance for any unsettling visuals)

PM said...

Next we'll hear he walked the ball to the cup.


gadfly said...

The White House phone log gap runs between 11:17 a.m. ET and 6:54 p.m. ET on Jan. 6 during the heart of the Capitol riot.

And we know that Trump called the personal cell phone of Sen. Mike Lee (R-UT) shortly after 2 p.m. ET. At that time, the senators had been evacuated from the Senate floor and were in a temporary holding room. The call was intended for Sen. Tommy Tuberville (R-AL) so Lee handed his phone to Tuberville and the resulting conversation, according to the Alabama senator, involved Trump frantically trying to convince "Coach" to help delay the counting of Electoral College votes - which strangely enough, had already been agreed to in advance of the joint session. And if Trump made this call, he obviously made many more, as did Rudy Giuliani (who also called Lee's phone in error)- from the White House as well.

gadfly said...

PM said...
Next we'll hear he walked the ball to the cup.

Ernie Els has never said a word about a Trump hole-in-one. Another Trump truth supported by an image of the removal of a golf ball from a cup.

Mark said...

The other, much more troubling gap as far as the 1/6 committee is concerned is that

NO

ONE

CARES

about their silly investigation.

Michael K said...

Seriously, the amount of doublethink required must carry some kind of mental health toll. Willfully and consistently blur reality and eventually it will do it with no effort on their part.

gadfly is obviously past the reality part.

Drago said...

The Easily Wound Up Moron gadfly: "And if Trump made this call, he obviously made many more, as did Rudy Giuliani (who also called Lee's phone in error)- from the White House as well."

LOLOLOLOLOLOLOLOLOLOLOL

Thanks for playing gadfly. Be sure to pick up your Team Dem cookie on the way out.

Readering said...

HILLARY SOMETHING!

Paul Mac said...

Oops...turns out it was probably just fake news BS, again again. Just like the dossier, Kavanaugh allegations, a Capitol Police officer being killed on J6, Covington kid smears, and so much more.

https://twitter.com/benshapiro/status/1509855610862555153