Trump’s Jan. 6 calls likely being ‘reverse engineered’ by investigators: Former US attorney
Jan. 6 investigators likely are attempting to "reverse engineer" records of former president Donald Trump's phone calls during the Capitol insurrection, according to former U.S. Attorney Preet Bharara.
On Thursday, the New York Times reported that the House Select Committee investigating the insurrection "has discovered gaps in official White House telephone logs from the day of the riot, finding few records of calls by President Donald J. Trump from critical hours when investigators know that he was making them."
Appearing on CNN on Friday night, Bharara said he believes the committee has a strong case to subpoena any missing phone records.
"Remember, when you subpoena records, you're not getting the actual content of conversations," Bharara said. "What you're trying to do is establish connections between people, moments of communication, pinpoint times. So I think they have a very strong case to get all that."
He added that he's unsure precisely what Jan. 6 committee members mean by "gaps."
"It sounds like it's the case that the committee is aware of conversations that took place between Donald Trump and other people, including Mark Meadows, maybe Vice President Pence and others," he said. "And so knowing that those conversations took place, and not being able to pinpoint an actual record of a call from a Trump phone to the other person's phone, suggests a gap. What it really suggests is ... that the committee probably doesn't have or may not even know which devices were used for which calls. There's reporting that Donald Trump sometimes used staffers' phones, other people's phones to make phone calls. He might have had one or more other personal cell phones."
"I think they can reverse engineer that to the extent that it's possible, by figuring out who the person was that was called, being sure that that call was made, and then seeing the numbers from which those calls happened," Bharara added. "My guess is they're taking a go at that, and they'll get more information in the future, but I think they need to figure out every single device used by Donald Trump on that day and the days leading up to it so they can get a full picture."
Watch the full interview below.
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