Something stinks
The plot continues to thicken for former “president” Donald Trump. Washington Post reported that the missing White House call logs are becoming more suspicious by the moment. Representative Jamie B. Raskin said the records are “of intense interest” to the committee even as a former Watergate prosecutor calls them “troubling.” Trump was obviously trying to hide something that day, and what better way to do that than to destroy the evidence? It is especially suspicious that, according to Raskin, the 7-plus hour gap occurred while the insurrectionists were attacking the Capitol. Appearing on “Face the Nation,” Raskin addressed the issue.
According to Raskin, the committee has been able to “piece together” some of Trump’s activities based on the testimony of others, but they have not been able to completely account for Trump’s time. Revealing how rarely a president “disappears” in this manner, Raskin said: “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.” While Raskin agreed that the gap could be due to incompetence, the amount of time is telling. According to Raskin: “The gaps are suspiciously tailored to the heart of the events” on January 6, including the time when several people pled with Trump to put a stop to the riot.
It is interesting to note these phone logs are part of what Donald Trump tried to keep from the committee with his endless litigation. Both the switchboard call logs, and the president’s official daily diary were included in the records turned over by the National Archives. As Raskin spoke with “Face the Nation,” he reiterated that the goal of the committee is to ensure that nothing like this ever happens again, and that he is “confident” that the entire story will come out even as they continue to face obstruction in their investigation. It is shameful that a so-called president behaved in the manner that Trump did, and it is raising some serious issues for him.
Jill Wine-Banks is a former Watergate prosecutor. According to NBC News, which published her op-ed, Trump’s call log gap is far worse than Nixon’s 18.5-minute erasure. We do not yet know whether Trump erased the calls or whether he just did not use the White House phones, but it looks bad. Wine-Banks revealed that she is the attorney who cross-examined Nixon’s secretary about the gap, and when she read about the gap from the Trump White House, she took immediate notice. Though they had proof that Nixon erased the missing portion, we do not yet have that proof with respect to Trump. According to Wine-Banks, however, it “certainly appears deliberate.” Nixon’s staff tried to call his erasure an “accident,” which might have flown because of the length, but there is no way Trump “accidentally” erased more than 7 hours. It is just not credible, and neither is Trump. It will be extremely interesting to see if the committee can bring forward evidence that Trump erased this time, and if he did, he had better start getting fitted for an orange jumpsuit.
Shirley is a former entertainment writer and has worked in the legal field for over 25 years