Jan. 6 Panel Weighs Subpoena of Trump’s Personal Phone Records
Jan. 6 Panel Weighs Subpoena of Trump’s Personal Phone Records
(Bloomberg) -- The chairman of the House committee investigating the Jan. 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol said the panel is considering subpoenaing former President Donald Trump’s personal phone records to help fill-in a more than seven-hour gap in White House telephone logs on the day of the riot.
“All that’s up for discussion,” Representative Bennie Thompson, a Mississippi Democrats, said. He said there are “some other options” as well that he refused to detail.
White House logs showing no calls to or from Trump from a little after 11 a.m. until almost 7 p.m. “are not consistent based on other information the committee has” on communications he had with lawmakers and others, Thompson said.
The select committee is focusing on whether Trump or any of his aides and advisers had a role in efforts to overturn the results of the 2020 presidential election or organizing the events that preceded the storming of the Capitol by Trump supporters as Congress was certifying the Electoral College results. A subpoena of Trump’s phone records likely would trigger a protracted legal battle with the former president.
Evidence presented during Trump’s second impeachment trial on charges of stoking the riot, public statements from officials and published reports detail Trump’s conversations with members of Congress as the Capitol was stormed and lawmakers and Vice President Mike Pence were being evacuated.
The reason for the gap in the record is unclear. Among the questions being pursued by the committee is whether Trump used aides’ phones or a disposable “burner” phone for calls.
Thompson said the committee is trying to fill in the blanks, in part, through testimony of witnesses who were with Trump that day.
“We just have to figure out what happened, why the logs are like they are.,” Thompson said of the documents turned over by the National Archives. “We just received them and obviously, we’re very concerned.”
Separately, Thompson said the committee is still considering whether to ask conservative activist Ginni Thomas, the wife of Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas, to sit for an interview with the panel.
Ginni Thomas has drawn more scrutiny after the Washington Post and CBS News disclosed the contents of text messages she exchanged with former Trump White House chief of staff Mark Meadows between Nov. 5, 2020, and Jan. 10, 2021. Many of those texts expressed anger over the 2020 election, urging Meadows to find a way to overturn the election and keep Trump in office.
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