Large gap in Trump call logs on insurrection day, January 6 committee finds

White House records from the day of the attack on the US Capitol show a gap of almost eight hours in then-president Donald Trump's phone logs, US media reported on Tuesday.

The 457-minute pause — from 11.17am until 6.54pm on January 6 last year — includes the period when the Capitol building was being stormed by a violent mob of Trump supporters, documents obtained by The Washington Post and CBS News showed.

The National Archives, the government agency that holds presidential documents, handed 11 pages of switchboard call logs and other records to the congressional select committee investigating the insurrection.

They show that Mr Trump had calls with at least eight people in the morning of the attack and 11 people that evening.

But there has been extensive reporting about phone conversations Mr Trump had with allies in Congress during the rioting that do not appear in the record.

Investigators are looking into whether Mr Trump used unofficial backchannels such as “burner phones” — cheap, hard-to-trace prepaid cell phones designed to be thrown away after use.

“I have no idea what a burner phone is, to the best of my knowledge, I have never even heard the term,” Mr Trump said in a statement to the Post.

One unnamed member of the panel told the Post the committee is investigating a “possible cover-up” of the White House records.

The documents show that former White House chief strategist Steve Bannon, who told listeners of his podcast the day before the assault that “all hell is going to break loose tomorrow”, spoke with Mr Trump twice on January 6.

Mr Bannon was indicted last year by the Justice Department for refusing to co-operate with the House committee.

On Monday, the committee voted unanimously to hold former Trump advisers Peter Navarro and Dan Scavino in contempt of Congress for their months-long refusal to comply with subpoenas.

The committee made their case that Mr Navarro, Mr Trump’s former trade adviser, and Mr Scavino, a White House communications aide under Mr Trump, have been unco-operative in the congressional investigation.

“They’re not fooling anybody. They are obligated to comply with our investigation. They have refused to do so. And that’s a crime,” Bennie Thompson, the committee’s Democratic chairman, said in his opening remarks.

The recommendation of criminal charges now goes to the full House, where it is likely to be approved by the Democratic-majority chamber. Approval there would then send the charges to the Justice Department, which has the final say on prosecution.

At Monday’s meeting, members of Congress made yet another appeal to Attorney General Merrick Garland, who has not yet made a decision to pursue the December contempt charges the House dispensed for former White House chief of staff Mark Meadows.

The Presidential Records Act requires that written communications related to the president's official duties, such as emails, memos and the diary logging his phone calls, be preserved.

Mr Trump lost his bid last month to stop the archives from releasing diaries, visitor logs, speech drafts and other White House documents to the House committee investigating the riot.

Some of the papers handed over had been “torn up by former president Trump” and taped back together, the archives revealed and added that it had also received a number of records that were still in pieces.