The gaps in Trump’s phone logs during January 6 Capitol riot are ‘suspiciously tailored to the heart of the events,’ Rep. Raskin says

• Rep. Jamie Raskin said the gaps in Trump’s phone logs on January 6 “suspiciously” align with the “heart of events.”
• White House call logs during the Capitol riot show a gap of seven hours and 37 minutes. 
• The House January 6 committee is investigating a “possible cover-up” of the phone records.

The gaps in former President Donald Trump’s phone logs on January 6 “suspiciously” coincide with the “heart of events,” Rep. Jamie Raskin said on Sunday. 

White House call logs during the Capitol riot show a gap of seven hours and 37 minutes, leading the House January 6 committee to investigate a “possible cover-up.”

“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,” said the Maryland Democrat, who is also a member of the January 6 committee. “It does seem like the gaps are suspiciously tailored to the heart of the events.”

Speaking with Margaret Brennan in an interview on “Face the Nation” on CBS News, Raskin said the committee has been able to “piece together” phone calls that the former president was on.

“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,” he said. 

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Recent reports from CNN also said that Trump frequently would move calls from the White Hosue’s in-house phone system to his cellphone. It may partially explain why calls that were corroborated by witnesses didn’t show up on the phone log, Insider’s Jake Lahut reported. 

On Sunday, Raskin said Trump “continues to look for a way to nullify an election that he considers fraudulent.” Raskin cited claims by Republican Rep. Mo Brooks that Trump pressured him to “rescind” the 2020 presidential election and remove President Joe Biden from office.

“What we need to do as a country to fortify democratic institutions and processes against future insurrections and coups and attempts to destabilize and overthrow our elections,” Raskin said. 

He added that the committee is looking for links “between the inside political coup and the violent insurrection.” 

“There was that violent insurrection, but then there was an attempt at an inside coup, what the political scientists call a self-coup, not a coup against a president, but a coup that’s orchestrated by the president against the constitutional system,” Raskin said. “And I do feel confident we’re going to be able to tell that story.”

Public hearings on the committee’s findings “should be in early May,” Raskin said.