The full timeline of Trump’s known phone calls on the day of the January 6 insurrection

JULY 21, 2022

President Donald Trump speaks on the telephone via speakerphone with Mexican President Enrique Pena Nieto in the Oval Office of the White House on August 27, 2018 in Washington, DC. Win McNamee/Getty Images

Reconstructing the timeline of President Donald Trump’s phone calls, communications, and movements on January 6, 2021 is a key focus of the House select committee investigating January 6 — and will be the subject of its eighth hearing in primetime on Thursday. 

The Washington Post and CBS previously obtained and reported on White House call logs and records secured by the Committee, documents that provide the most comprehensive timeline of Trump’s known phone calls before and after the riots at the US Capitol.

But the official White House call logs contain a more than seven-hour gap between 11:17 am and 6:54 pm, a crucial stretch of time during which Trump openly pressured Vice President Mike Pence to overturn the 2020 election results in Congress, the president’s supporters violently breached the Capitol, and Trump put out multiple tweets and videos about the events.

Here’s the full timeline of Trump’s communications on January 6 as documented in official White House call logs and records obtained by the January 6 committee and reported on by The Post and CBS.

Then-President Donald Trump speaks at a rally at the Ellipse on January 6, 2021. Samuel Corum/Getty Images

Trump’s documented phone calls on January 6, 2021:

• 8:34 am: Trump speaks to lawyer Kurt Olsen, who played a key role in legal efforts to overturn the 2020 election.
• 8:37 am: Trump speaks to adviser Steve Bannon.
• 8:45 am: Trump speaks to lawyer Rudy Giuliani.
• 8:56 am: Trump returns a call from White House chief of staff Mark Meadows.
• 9:02 am: Trump places a call to Pence and leaves a message.
• 9:24 am: Trump speaks to Rep. Jim Jordan for 10 minutes, a call first reported by CNN.
• 9:41 am: Trump speaks to Giuliani for six minutes.
• 9:52 am: Trump speaks to senior adviser Stephen Miller for 26 minutes.
• 10:32 am: Trump briefly speaks to bodyman and personal assistant Nick Luna.
• 10:40 am: Trump attempts to reach Sen. Mitch McConnell and leaves a message (There’s no record that McConnell returned his call). Trump attempts to reach Sen. Josh Hawley, but is unsuccessful. Hawley said he never returned Trump’s calls on January 6, when he objected to election results at the joint session of Congress.
• 11:04 am: Trump speaks to former Sen. David Perdue of Georgia.
• 11:17 am: Trump speaks to “an unidentified person.” A separate document turned over to the Committee from the National Archives indicates that Trump spoke to Sen. Kelly Loeffler of Georgia for three minutes at this time.

Insurrectionists loyal to President Donald Trump breach the Capitol in Washington on January 6. AP Photo/John Minchillo

Trump spoke at the “Save America” rally at the Ellipse at noon and returned to the White House at 1:19 pm, according to White House records. After the Capitol was breached at around 2 pm, the next record in the president’s daily diary is Trump going to the Rose Garden at 4:03 pm to record a video telling his supporters to “go home in love and peace.”

Trump “returned to the Oval Office” at 4:07 pm, according to the records, and “went to the Second Floor Residence” at 6:27 pm.

Several of Trump’s previously reported communications from January 6, including a call with House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy and Trump attempting to reach Sen. Tommy Tuberville but calling Sen. Mike Lee instead, do not appear in the official White House call logs, per CBS and The Post.

The Guardian also reported on Thursday that Trump called Lee from an official White House phone number at 2:26 pm, during the seven-hour gap in call log records, but the call was not properly documented and recorded in the White House call logs.

New reports in CNN and Axios indicate, however, that the missing seven hours of records was perhaps not due to a deliberate coverup or tampering, but a function of Trump’s phone habits and the Trump White House’s inconsistent and shoddy record-keeping practices.

CNN reported that Trump developed a habit of placing calls directly from a landline or cell phone and not through the official White House switchboard while in the Oval Office. That tendency could explain why his calls from the Oval Office on the afternoon of January 6, unlike those later placed from the residence, didn’t show up on the official White House call logs.

Axios further reported that Trump’s then-executive assistant Molly Michael, who played a key role in documenting and keeping handwritten notes and records of Trump’s daily schedule, calls, and meetings, was also out of office for most of January 6 — and when she arrived at work in the afternoon, the White House was already embroiled in chaos.

The Committee is probing whether Trump may have used aides’ phones, burner phones, and other back channels to place and receive calls on January 6 that aren’t documented in the official White House call logs and records from that day.

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