Rep. Jamie Raskin (D-MD), who serves on the Jan. 6 Select Committee, on Sunday said the panel views the revelation of former President Trump’s seven-hour gap in his Jan. 6 White House call logs as a development that seems “suspiciously tailored to the heart of the events” surrounding the deadly Capitol insurrection.
Asked about the former president’s seven-hour gap in his White House call logs during an interview on CBS, Raskin characterized the revelation as a curious development.
“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,” Raskin said.
Raskin noted that based on interviews and depositions it has conducted so far, the committee has been able to piece some pieces of the Jan. 6 puzzle together, which includes other phone calls that took place as the insurrection unfolded that included Trump.
Raskin, however, acknowledged that many questions remain in the committee’s investigation that are of “intense interest.”
“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,” Raskin said.
Pressed on whether there is a chance that the seven-hour gap could be due to large scale incompetence rather than conspiracy, given the former president’s reputation for being “sloppy” when it came to record-keeping, Raskin replied that the committee is “taking that possibility into account.”
Raskin added that the gaps in Trump’s White House call logs on Jan. 6 seem “suspiciously tailored to the heart of the events” that the committee is investigating.
“We’re checking that out,” Raskin said. “And our mandate under H.R. 503 is to get a complete picture of everything that took place on January 6, the causes leading up to it, and then 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’s appearance on CBS comes on the heels of CNN reporting that Trump’s presidential diarist testified to the Jan. 6 Select Committee last month that the then-President’s White House officials provided scant details of Trump’s calls and visits in the days leading up to the insurrection.
Last week, the Washington Post and CBS News revealed the seven-hour gap in the White House call log and the presidential diary on the day of the insurrection.
The White House records of Trump’s calls on Jan. 6 reportedly did not include any calls he made or received from 11:17 a.m. to 6:54 p.m. that day. The call logs were turned over to the Jan. 6 Select Committee by the National Archives.
According to the Post, the Jan. 6 Select Committee is currently investigating whether Trump communicated that day “through backchannels, phones of aides or personal disposable phones, known as ‘burner phones.’”
Watch Raskin’s remarks below:
