Missing White House Phone Logs: What Trump Is Hiding?

In my view, Donald Trump has always operated in a manner akin to a Mafia crime boss - just not in a manner as smart as most Mafia bosses.  Now, a seven hour and thirty-seven minute gap has been exposed in the White House phone logs for January 6, 2021, including times when Trump is known to have spoken with a number of congressional Republicams.  This gap in information makes Richard Nixon's 18 minutes of missing tapes of Oval Office conversations following the Watergate break-in pale in comparison, not least because Nixon wasn't fomenting a violent assault on the U.S. Capitopl repleat with chants to kill members of Congress and then Vice President Mike Pence. It's all too obvious Trump is engaged in a coverup and is seeking to hide evidence that might well seal the case that he conspired to overthrow the 2020 election and is guilty of felonies as suggested by a federal judge recently.  A piece in The Atlantic looks at what Trump is likely trying to hide:

At noon on January 6, 2021, then-President Donald Trump spoke to supporters at a rally near the White House. Journalists often quote his incendiary language from the speech: “Fight like hell”; “We will not take it anymore.” But Trump also laid out a precise plan of action for the crowd:

If Mike Pence does the right thing, we win the election. All he has to do, all this is, this is from the No. 1, or certainly one of the top, constitutional lawyers in our country. He has the absolute right to do it …

Trump told the crowd how they could force Pence to act on Trump’s plan.

After this, we’re going to walk down—and I’ll be there with you—we’re going to walk down, we’re going to walk down. . . . . Because you’ll never take back our country with weakness. You have to show strength and you have to be strong. We have come to demand that Congress do the right thing and only count the electors who have been lawfully slated, lawfully slated.

Trump promised the crowd that if they did as he urged—if they marched on Congress, if they showed strength—they could force a change of the election result.

About 45 minutes before Trump delivered this speech, he made his last call for nearly eight hours on the White House phone system. From 11:17 a.m. until almost 7 p.m., Trump made all of his phone calls on a nongovernment phone.

We know [Trump] the president spoke by phone during that gap. As the crowd came crashing toward the office of the Republican House leader Kevin McCarthy, McCarthy called the president to demand he stop the violence. Trump instead excused it. “Well, Kevin, I guess these people are more upset about the election than you are.” Witnesses reported seeing the president on the phone many other times during the day.

As president, Trump often avoided using official lines. He used multiple phones of his own. He borrowed phones from other people.

Trump did not grab phones at random. He thought tactically about which phone to use. . . . . Trump’s phone choices were powerfully intentional. What was he intending on January 6? The answer is obvious: concealment. But concealment of what?

Trump’s actions that day were not secret. They all happened in full public view. He incited a crowd to attack Congress in order to overturn by violence his election defeat. He refused to act to protect Congress and the Constitution when the attack began, and for a long time afterward. When he finally did act, he did so ineffectively: a tweet at 2:38 p.m. faintly suggesting that the crowd be more peaceful, another at 3:13 saying so more emphatically—all following a tweet at 2:24 p.m. once again condemning Pence for not indulging the fantasy that his vice president could overturn the election for him.

Trump did not order the National Guard to the Capitol until past 3:30. He did not release a video statement against the violence until past 4 p.m.

But the world does not know everything about January 6—not yet, anyway—and Trump’s phone behavior may suggest the answer to the most important remaining questions:

1. Did Trump in any way authorize the attack in advance?
2. Did Trump in any way communicate or coordinate with the attackers as the attack unfolded?

Trump’s phone choices sought to conceal the answers to those questions. Why? One of the pivotal moments during the Watergate scandal of 1972 was the revelation that President Richard Nixon’s secretary had erased 18 and a half crucial minutes of a tape recorded three days after the break-in. The erasure suggested consciousness of guilt by the president, and helped end his presidency.

Trump’s 7.5-hour gap likewise suggests consciousness of something. And it sure smells like guilt.

A column in the Washington Post stresses the need for investigator and prosecutors - including pathetic Attorney General Merrick Garland - to act with speed and force witnesses to testify and get to the bottom of Trump's crimes and at a minimu put him in prison.  There is no time to waste:

The Post’s Bob Woodward and CBS News’s Robert Costa revealed Tuesday that the White House call records turned over to the House committee investigating the Jan. 6, 2021, attack are stunningly incomplete, showing no calls between 11:17 a.m. and 6:54 p.m. — that is, when a pro-Trump mob smashed its way into the Capitol. But Mr. Trump was not incommunicado. Voluminous reporting established long ago that he reached out to Sen. Tommy Tuberville (R-Ala.) and spoke with House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) during this period.

Did Mr. Trump or his aides purge the records, or did the then-president avoid using official channels to skirt record-keeping? In either case, how — and why? The White House records gap underlines questions about who else Mr. Trump spoke with, or tried to, and what he said.

The public needs answers. Even if Mr. Trump or one of his enablers does not run for president in 2024, history requires a complete record of Jan. 6’s horror. The Capitol invasion was itself dreadful; the apparent indifference, or perhaps even approval, of the commander in chief, who should have acted swiftly to protect Congress, was another national tragedy that can never be repeated.

Any kind of corrupt White House record-keeping is also a major problem. If presidents can ignore or evade record-keeping requirements with impunity, they could engage in extensive wrongdoing and bet that investigators will never find enough evidence to expose them.

The Jan. 6 committee must redouble its efforts to establish the definitive story about one of the darkest days in the nation’s history — and any possible attempt to manipulate the record. The panel will require more help from the Justice Department and the courts. Prosecutors must bring swift cases against all those held in contempt for failing to cooperate with the committee. Judges must adjudicate these cases with all possible speed.