The United States (US) House Select Committee on the 6 January Attack has reported gaps in the official White House telephone records from the day of the incident, New York Times reported on Thursday, 10 February.
Investigators say that the records of calls made by former President Donald Trump during the hours preceding and during the riots are not available.
This obstructs them from trying to achieve their goal, which is to recreate what Trump was doing on the day of the attack.
While there is no evidence to suggest that Trump tampered with or deleted his records, it is has been regularly reported that Trump uses his personal phone for work purposes, thereby bypassing presidential protocol.
Jason Baron, a professor at the University of Maryland and former director of litigation at the National Archives and Records Administration (NARA), said that Trump's decision to use his personal phone on government matters was at odds with the spirit of the law.
"Government agencies are supposed to document phone calls when the conversation is about important government business. A president choosing to use a personal cellphone on a sensitive matter of government business without the conversation being recorded anywhere raises serious questions about his compliance with the spirit of the Presidential Records Act."Jason Baron, University of Maryland
The revelation about the gaps in the call logs comes in the backdrop of NARA asking the Justice Department to investigate Trump’s handling of the White House records.
New York Times has also reported that while Trump was president, his White House staff used to regularly discover printed paper clogging a toilet.
The natural conclusion they arrived at was that Trump was trying to flush documents down the toilet.
Anonymous sources told NYT that similar practices by the president were observed when he was on his foreign trips.
(With inputs from NYT.)
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