I’m trying to figure out how that would have worked. Obama used a cell phone modified for security, and I’m pretty sure calls to/from it were logged. Any government-owned phones would have some kind of logging. Personal phones wouldn’t, but it’s (ha!) improper to use those phones for government business. That’s one of the places where Meadows got dinged. But also (don’t know about preservation) all those cell calls would be going through connections to the public telephone network that do logging for billing and other purposes. (Does anyone know if the white house has its own cell transceiver(s)?) Unless they were using some kind of encrypted voice app…
So just going all mobile wouldn’t buy you all the invisibility you wanted.
Feral, but yes. Trump definitely knew that it was “wrong” to try to steal the electoral college and fuck up Congress’s shit, so he took certain measures to help conceal his role in it. Much like a bank robber might put on a ski mask to conceal his identity. At the end of the day, the bank robber still gets charged with bank robbery, not wearing the mask.
What public record would be generated when Fat Donnie uses a private cell phone instead of a White House land line?
Destroying the Presidential Diary – “similar in nature to a daily log, is a chronological record of the President’s movements, phone calls, trips, briefings, meetings, and activities. The Diarist compiles information from a wide array of Presidential records, manages the paper record and a computer database system, and assists the incumbent Administration with information requests regarding the official schedule of the President.”
And how has such (non-existent) record been criminally destroyed?
Deleting those seven hours from the Presidential Diary, thereby furthering a conspiracy to obstruct the congressional investigation (18 U.S.C. § 1505).
I didn’t say these guys were good at opsec. But…using randos’ cell phones rather than the desk phone or one’s own phone does buy some more delay in the investigation.
One more thought on the 7+ hour gap: even if TFG intentionally switched to cell phones during that period, there still should be some incoming calls to landline numbers. Unless the practice was to never put those calls though, so “everyone” at that point (after four years) knew you never try to get though to oval office personnel on the land line.
Point taken, but this continuing cover-up keeps showing us that we don’t know the dimensions of what we don’t yet know.
One wonders what procedures the National Archives and Records Administration adopted in response to Trump’s penchant to use others’ phones, given their clear mandate to log all calls? And what their Daily Compilation of Presidential Documents looks like for 1/6?
ETA: Checked, and the latter only has his remarks on 1/7, and are generally less comprehensive than I expected.
Possibly, but I can’t see tfg or any of his top advisors giving a damn about anybody’s re-election prospects that day. They needed to have the insurrection succeed or they were all on shaky ground with their own political futures. Maybe he called sen tuber hoping he’d tackle pence and beat him into submission before he could get away.
There was so much crime on that day that the end of it will probably never be fully revealed. The problem with letting it slide for so long is that Americans tend to go to sleep easily, then when you wake them and say “Hey, a guy who was once the Commander in Chief lit a baby on fire and watched it burn a couple of years ago” they say, “Whatever.”
Regardless of what TFG and the mooks think, the senator in question very much cares about his own skin and re-election prospects. Even if he might not run again (rojo), he still wants to fill the campaign fund as much as possible.
Very true, but it’s not exactly new information that Trump skipped the land line in favor of his and various other people’s cell phones. When Kevin McCarthy wanted to talk to Trump, I very much doubt that he dialed the White House switchboard. So I’m not especially surprised to learn that there is nothing recorded in the official phone logs before/during the actual insurrection.
None. It’s not their job to generate the records, just to maintain them after receiving them from the people responsible at the White House. And Trump was so lazy and evasive that they didn’t have a hell of a lot to record.
Whoever is in charge of logging White House calls needs to be subpoenaed and brought in to testify why that gap exists and why calls were not logged. If they were ordered not to log the calls, who gave that order and they should be subpoenaed and brought in to explain. There is only 1 reason not to log the calls. . . something illegal was going on.
Huh? Caller ID doesn’t tell you where a call’s coming from, or who’s calling, only from which # the call is being made. And AFAIK there’s no legal way for an average person to know where the caller is when they call them, at least GPS-wise, unless they enable the “follow me” function (and who does that?).
Of course the FBI can find all this info via warrants, to determine which calls were placed to and from wherever Trump was known to be during this 7 hour gap, to and from whom, and if these calls were recorded (lawfully), what was said.
That aside, isn’t it illegal for the president to make political calls from within the West Wing, and to use non-official devices to make such calls, as well as official calls, for national security, legal and presidential records reasons? So could this be a crime on top of what may have been discussed in these calls, and any attempt to conceal these calls or lie about their details?
Oh what a tangled web we weave, when first we practice to deceive…
Scroll through the day (bottom of the article in the link). Cell phone calls were also recorded, to folks like gym jordan, scavino, 9/11nounverb, sean hannity, all listed as cellular.
He has one last call from 1104-1106 with sen perdue, then radio silence, no listed landline or cellular.
If Giuliani and others are recorded outside that period just fine as cell calls, then this just stinks to high heavens.
