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Mind the Gap
Author: BobR    Date: 03/30/2022 12:48:24

Way back in olden times, during the leadup to the 1972 election, several men broke into the Democratic campaign headquarters in the Watergate hotel in DC to steal campaign information. It's unclear whether Richard Nixon knew about the plans ahead of time, but he certainly found out about it later, and did nothing. This led to the infamous question of "what did he know, and when did he know it?".

All of this became a huge investigation, especially when it was revealed that Nixon used the advanced technology of tape recording to tape his conversations. That paranoia would become his undoing when the investigative committees and special prosecutors demanded the tapes. The damning evidence wasn't what was on the tapes, but what wasn't on the tapes: 18 1/2 minutes of blank space where a key conversation should have been:
At 2:30 a.m. on June 17, 1972, five men were arrested while attempting to plant electronic surveillance devices in the Democratic National Committee headquarters, in the Watergate office building in Washington. On June 19, the Washington Post published a story by Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein revealing that one of the five men was James McCord, who was a security contractor with President Nixon’s Committee to Re-elect the President (CREEP).

The next day, President Nixon met with his Chief of Staff, H.R. Haldeman, at about 11:30 a.m.

[...]

On November 17, 1973, the White House informed Federal District Judge John Sirica that the 18 1/2 minute Nixon-Haldeman conversation of June 20, 1972, had been erased.

There was other incriminating evidence on the tapes, and Nixon - facing an impeachment trial - decided to resign instead. His actions would lead to the eventual passing of the Presidential Records Act, which requires presidents to keep all records, and prevents them from destroying evidence.

Fast-forward to Jan 06, 2021. Then-still-pResident TFG had a rally by the White House in a last-ditch effort to get veep Pence to help him prevent the final step of certifying the obvious winner of the election (now-president Joe Biden). There is some video evidence from backstage at the rally, and some phone records from certain members of Congress calling TFG and asking him to call off the dogs.

He was impeached for this, but the Senate failed to get a conviction, due to hyper-partisanship (also, TFG was already out of office, which made it easy for fellow Republicans to dismiss the trial as moot). Nonetheless, a committee was formed to investigate the Jan 06 insurrection, and has been gathering evidence. Lawyers for TFG keep trying to claim "executive privilege", but the courts disagreed and he was compelled to turn over evidence, including the call logs for that day.

In a case of deja vu, there is a gap in the record. Not 18 1/2 minutes this time, but a 7 hour gap:
Internal White House records from the day of the attack on the U.S. Capitol that were turned over to the House select committee show a gap in President Donald Trump’s phone logs of seven hours and 37 minutes, including the period when the building was being violently assaulted, according to documents obtained by The Washington Post and CBS News.

The lack of an official White House notation of any calls placed to or by Trump for 457 minutes on Jan. 6, 2021 — from 11:17 a.m. to 6:54 p.m. — means the committee has no record of his phone conversations as his supporters descended on the Capitol, battled overwhelmed police and forcibly entered the building, prompting lawmakers and Vice President Mike Pence to flee for safety.

[...]

The records show that Trump was active on the phone for part of the day, documenting conversations that he had with at least eight people in the morning and 11 people that evening. The seven-hour gap also stands in stark contrast to the extensive public reporting about phone conversations he had with allies during the attack, such as a call Trump made to Sen. Mike Lee (R-Utah) — seeking to talk to Sen. Tommy Tuberville (R-Ala.) — and a phone conversation he had with House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.).

[...]

The House panel is now investigating whether Trump communicated that day through back channels, phones of aides or personal disposable phones, known as “burner phones,” according to two people with knowledge of the probe, who, like others interviewed for this report, spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss sensitive information.

TFG has previously violated the Act by tearing up (and sometimes trying to flush) presidential documents. This is yet another case of him trying to hide his actions. This is what a criminal does. I cannot find what the penalties are for violating the Act, but he should be prosecuted to the full extent of the law. Nixon was impeached and resigned. TFG is planning another run for pResident in 2024, and Republicans in this day and age are supporting him.

Fifty years later, the gap is wider, and I am not just referring to the presidential records.
 

14 comments (Latest Comment: 03/30/2022 19:32:01 by TriSec)
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