Front Burner - Ivanka Trump, missing call logs and the Jan. 6 inquiry

Episode Date: April 12, 2022

Almost nine months ago, an investigation was launched into the Jan. 6 insurrection, and recently some of the people closest to Donald Trump have testified, including his daughter Ivanka and her husband Jared Kushner. But after hearing from more than 800 witnesses a few key questions remain — will the former U.S. president be called to testify? What happened to almost eight hours of missing phone records? Will this now move to the Department of Justice? Today on Front Burner, we talk to congressional reporter for Politico, Nicholas Wu, on the major revelations of this committee so far, what’s left to learn and where it all goes from here.

In the Dragon's Den, a simple pitch can lead to a life-changing connection. Watch new episodes of Dragon's Den free on CBC Gem. Brought to you in part by National Angel Capital Organization, empowering Canada's entrepreneurs through angel investment and industry connections. This is a CBC Podcast. Hey, I'm Jamie Poisson. For the last nine months, Democrats, have been gathering evidence, hearing testimony from hundreds of witnesses, and trying to figure out what happened that day and in the lead up to it.

I think what we have seen is a massive and well-organized and well-planned effort that used multiple tools to try to overturn an election. Including whether former President Trump and his team conspired to reverse the outcome of the 2020 election. Because you'll never take back our country with weakness. You have to show strength and you have to be strong. Things have really started to ramp up in recent weeks. The president's closest allies have testified behind closed doors.

Earlier today, the January 6th committee heard from the former president's daughter, Ivanka Trump herself, who was actually at the White House during the January 6th riot. A lawsuit pointed to evidence of criminality by the former president. A federal judge in Santa Ana has ruled former President Donald Trump more likely than not attempted to illegally block Congress from certifying the results of the 2020 election. — There's also the mystery of hours and hours

of missing call logs from the White House records that day. — There is a massive seven-hour and 37-minute gap in calls from 11 17 a.m to 6 54 p.m which includes the most violent period of the attack. And there's even this strange connection to a Supreme Court justice. Newly revealed text messages showing the pressure the wife of Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas put on the White House to overturn the 2020 election. But despite all of this, there are still real questions about what it could all mean for Trump and his inner circle. Today on FrontBurner, we're talking to Politico's Nick Wu.

And we're going to go through some of the major revelations coming out of the inquiry so far. What's left to learn and where this could all go. Hey, Nick, welcome to FrontBurner. Hi there. Thanks so much for having me. I was wondering if we could start here with the basics. Can you remind our listeners what exactly the January 6th Committee is? The January 6th Committee is this investigative body set up by the U.S. Congress to look into what exactly happened during the January 6th, 2021 attack on the Capitol. It's composed of members of Congress.

There's seven Democrats and two Republicans on it. And they're tasked with investigating the facts and the circumstances of the attack. And they're empowered to issue subpoenas as part of their investigation. The House Select Committee investigating the January 6th Capitol insurrection has just subpoenaed four close allies of Donald Trump, including Rudy Giuliani.

Let's get straight to it. Announcing the subpoenas of five witnesses. Now, among those on the list, Trump ally Roger Stone and far-right radio host Alex Jones. Brand new subpoena targeting Kimberly Guilfoyle. Remember her? Obtain documents, talked to witnesses. And what we're thinking is going to happen in the coming months is that they're finally going to move from the investigative phase of their investigation into the public phase. So this means there will be public hearings as part of the inquiry.

There will be an interim report and then a final report that they're all hoping to put out before the year is up. And I wonder if you could give me a sense of just how sprawling the investigation has been so far. Like, how many people have they heard from? Who have they heard from? This is a huge investigation. So far, the committee says they've talked to over 800 people. They've gotten thousands of documents. They've received hundreds of tips that they've all chased on. And it looks like they're going to keep on investigating up until when they flip the

switch and start going public with their investigation. I know that Ivanka Trump testified last week and before that, her husband, Jared. Do we have a sense of what was said there? I know you just mentioned that these hearings are not yet public. The tricky thing here is that most of the committee's work has all been behind closed doors or, well, closed Zooms in these times. So most of what they've done hasn't been public record. They've only held one public hearing, and that was with four different police officers who responded on January 6th, who gave very powerful testimony about their experiences defending the Capitol that day. I was aware enough to recognize I was at risk of being stripped of and killed with my own firearm.

I was electrocuted again and again and again. What we do know is that they have been able to talk to members of Trump's inner circle. And they've revealed this through court filings. Sources have told us what exactly has happened. And some witnesses have even gone public about how the committee's questioning went. But yes, you mentioned Ivanka Trump. The former president's own daughter testified to the committee for what sources told us was probably about eight hours. The chairman of the committee, just in the last couple hours or so, he suggested that to his knowledge, and that's an important caveat, she hasn't been asserting, for example, executive privilege.

I mean, she's answering questions. I mean, you know, not in a broad, chatty term, but she's answering questions. Her husband, Jared Kushner, did as well. A member of the January 6th Committee, Democratic Congresswoman Zoe Lofgren of California. Was Jared Kushner combative? Was he cooperative? He was not combative. He was precise. He didn't volunteer anything, but he did answer questions if he remembered the answers. We don't know exactly what they said in these interviews, and we probably won't for some time until the committee starts to release transcripts and reveals more of what was said. But what we do know is that leading up to this,

committee members said they wanted to talk to folks like Ivanka, like Jared, to get a sense of what it was like in the president's inner circle on January 6th. Why did he not, for example, intervene during the January 6th attack? Or in the case of Ivanka Trump, right, she was around for a meeting with the president on the morning of Januaryanka Trump, right, she was around for a meeting with the president on the morning of January 6, right, trying to get at some of this granular detail to build a timeline to really paint a picture of what happened that so far has not come out into the public record. I know that one issue that the committee is coming up against is that we learned that for seven hours and 37 minutes, there are no records of phone calls by Donald Trump on January 6th.

And why is this an important detail for the committee? What's unclear right now is, you know, was there something nefarious or was this simply incompetence, as was often the case with the Trump administration? They were not particularly known for their skill at record keeping. And so committee members have told me is that they're trying to take an interest in painting what exactly happened. You know, what did this actually mean? The president made no calls during that time. Was he using other people's phones?

You know, was he using burner phones? Who knows? And so this is something that the committee is trying to get at as they build out their investigation into the attack. It's pretty wild with all of this coming out. I've read that now there's concern that Trump has used burner phones throughout his entire presidency, hey? It's kind of unclear what exactly the burner phones and all these allegations around it have to do with this gap in the White House's call records on January 6th.

Burner phones could certainly be one explanation. Trump said in a statement, quote, I have no idea what a burner phone is. To the best of my knowledge, I have never even heard of the term. It could be that the president used other people's phones to make calls, as he was certainly known to do. It could also just be simple incompetence by the White House in its record keeping. It's worth remembering how chaotic these final weeks of the Trump White House were as staff were departing and they were packing up and trying

to prepare for a new administration. And some staff that might have been in charge of actually keeping these records might not have even been in the White House that day. And so it's worth remembering that, although all these allegations of burner phones do add this kind of conspiratorial air to it all. Another thing we hear a lot about are these text messages that they've been able to get their hands on from former White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows. And I understand he provided like thousands of emails and texts. And do we know anything about what those texts reveal right now?

All of this comes from a time when Mark Meadows, the former chief of staff to President Trump, looked like he actually was going to cooperate with the January 6th committee. There was a kind of, you know, handshake deal, basically, where he might be able to come in and talk to them. And in doing so, he turned over these thousands of emails and texts related to the committee's investigation. Former White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows sent an email to someone on January 5th

saying the National Guard would be present to, quote, protect pro-Trump people in the lead up to the U.S. Capitol insurrection. The committee now raising questions in their report over Meadows' text messages with state lawmakers about overturning their own election results. His communications with members of Congress about the vote. All of that fell apart and Meadows ultimately didn't end up coming in. And then the U.S. House of Representatives voted to basically refer Mr. Meadows to the Justice Department for criminal prosecution for not cooperating with their inquiry. Meadows to the Justice Department for criminal prosecution for not cooperating with their inquiry. But what they do have now are these thousands of documents that they've used to

paint a picture of what happened. And what they've revealed in many ways is the chaos in the White House on January 6th. And fairly recently, the committee, they've released some of these text messages to the public. And what we see is basically Mark Meadows being asked by everyone from Fox News personalities. The president needs to tell people in the Capitol to go home. This is hurting all of us. He is destroying his legacy, Laura Ingram wrote. Please get him on TV. Destroying everything you have accomplished, Brian Kilmeade texted.

Quote, can he make a statement? Ask people to leave the Capitol, Sean Hannity urged. To members of Congress, to the president's own son, Donald Trump Jr. He's got to condemn this shit ASAP. The Capitol Police tweet is not enough. Donald Trump Jr. texted. Frantically trying to get in touch with him on January 6th to get the president to intervene, to call off the rioters, to just say something, anything at all on January 6th. And this is just the tip of the iceberg. I mean, the committee is holding all of this pretty close to its chest. You know, it's not the kind of thing that we have a whole lot of insight to as reporters or the general public. And so, you know, we can expect to see more of

this come out into the public record in the next few months. I also understand that Meadows turned over this PowerPoint presentation. It was titled Election Fraud, Foreign Interference and Options for 6th January. And tell me about that. So that PowerPoint was part of all of these documents that really kind of show how Meadows was bombarded by all of these allies in the former president's orbit about ways to overturn the election. This PowerPoint outlined some elements of a legal strategy to overturn the election in the U.S. Congress when the electoral votes came up for certification on January 6, 2021. And it doesn't appear that Meadows did anything with this email and this PowerPoint. It's kind of in many ways like, as reporters, imagine how we get crazy tips from people and crazy emails from people

all the time. It appears that this might be, in some ways, kind of how this works there. Meadows, in a lot of ways, was viewed by many of these folks as like a conduit for these kind of wacky theories to try to overturn the election. Right. Like sort of like a gatekeeper. Exactly. In the Dragon's Den, a simple pitch can lead to a life-changing connection. Watch new episodes of Dragon's Den free on CBC Gem.

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And I guess, why could it be significant? Ginny Thomas, in many ways, brings this aspect of the investigation back to Mark Meadows, since, as several outlets have reported recently, to Mark Meadows since, as several outlets have reported recently, she had been texting Mark Meadows with these election fraud theories and ways to try to overturn the election in the months leading up to January 6th and what appears to be some time after it as well. Ginny Thomas wrote to Meadows, help this great president stand firm, Mark. You are the leader with him who is standing for America's constitutional governance at the precipice. The majority knows Biden and the left is attempting the greatest heist of our history, she texted. And it's worth noting that, I mean, Ginny Thomas was a longtime conservative activist. So was Mark Meadows, even dating back to his time as a member of Congress.

Now, how exactly significant this will be to the investigation kind of remains to be seen. It would be politically explosive for the committee to try to call the wife of a Supreme Court justice in to testify. And so while committee members have said they certainly have the authority to do so, it doesn't seem like any decision has been made on that as of yet. That being said, it is kind of worth looking at the broader political picture here. I mean, Clarence Thomas, of course, sits on the highest court in the land, and there's been significant political pressure from Democrats for him to step aside from any cases related to January 6th because his wife was espousing these sorts of conspiracy theories and continuing to trumpet these baseless claims of election fraud. Whether or not he'll do that is also kind of an open

question. The American Supreme Court is kind of a self-regulating entity in a lot of ways. And so there's not really much of a way for Congress to force him to step down from adjudicating any of these cases, let alone leave the court altogether, which is something that some Democrats have called for. Yeah, that's kind of, I don't know, it's kind of crazy to hear that there's no, there's like no, That's kind of, I don't know, it's kind of crazy to hear that there's no rules around this stuff, eh? Yeah, I mean, this has also led for some calls in Congress to pass a kind of judicial code of ethics for the Supreme Court to kind of make sure that you don't have this kind of situation arise in the first place. In theory, as some Democrats see it, this crystallizes why they need to move on passing a judicial code of ethics. But saying something and doing something is always hard, and especially so with the U.S. Congress. Okay, the last thing I wanted to touch on with you on this highlight reel that we're going through before we kind of pull some of these threads together is I want to talk about a court case

that will potentially have an impact here and make it easier for the committee to get access to information and key evidence here. And I know that this is a civil case in which the presiding judge, U.S. District Court Judge David Carter, ruled that one of Trump's allies, a lawyer named John Eastman, has to turn over this cachet of communications between Eastman and the president to the committee. And the judge ruled essentially that Eastman and Trump broke the law. They engaged in criminal conspiracy. And I know this is a civil court judge, but like, what did he find? What did he say? Well, Judge Carter's ruling is one of the most significant parts of this investigation so far. The committee has said for some time through court filings that they believe the former president and his allies broke the law in trying to obstruct the proceedings of Congress when it met to certify the results of the election and that they knew it was unlawful in the process of plotting all that. So for then this federal judge to come out and say that Trump and his allies were part

of this criminal conspiracy, it really helps to crystallize what the committee is trying to get at here and goes to show how they hope to eventually move this investigation perhaps over towards the side of federal prosecutors as well. Judge Carter wrote, if, quote, Eastman and President Trump's plan had worked, it would have permanently ended the peaceful transition of power undermining American democracy and the Constitution. If the country does not commit to investigating and pursuing accountability for those responsible. The court fears January 6th will repeat itself. The interesting thing with the Eastman case is that this is all about one of the former president's top allies, John Eastman.

He was a professor at Chapman University, a former professor, and basically he'd used his university email account to try to communicate with all of these Trump world folks to discuss political and legal strategy related to efforts to overturn the election. This led to a big lawsuit when the January 6th committee tried to get all of these emails. And now, in addition to getting this ruling from the judge saying that Trump broke the law, the judge also ruled in favor of the committee. And now they've got 101 emails from John Eastman that he had tried to shield from the committee.

And so we don't entirely know the contents of these emails yet, but this is something that will help to shed further light on how exactly Trump and all of his allies were waging this legal battle to try to overturn the 2020 election. You know, it remains to be seen exactly how they'll present it about where this is heading. So, I mean, obviously you talked earlier about how this will move into a more public stage, and this information will be out in the public domain, or more of the information, all the evidence that this committee has gathered. You also mentioned that this could go to the DOJ, the Department of Justice.

It seems like a logical step here would be for the committee to present this case to the Department of Justice. But I understand there's like hesitation about making that happen. I understand there's like hesitation about making that happen. There is some hesitation from members of the committee to make that happen. The lawmakers that I had talked to had basically said that for them to do it, in part because there's not really a formal process for Congress to give one of these referrals to the Justice Department. As one member of Congress put it to me, a referral from the committee doesn't have any particularly special standing in getting the Justice Department to do anything. The Justice Department can charge

whom they please. And some legal experts have said that basically, if the committee were to try to do that, this could also, in some ways, taint whatever the Justice Department decides to do with an air of partisanship, like making it look like the Justice Department decided to pursue criminal charges based on what antipartisan members of Congress told them to do. And so there's certainly some hesitation about that. And it's causing some controversy along the way. I guess, too, is it fair to say that if this committee just gets all of the stuff that they've collected out into the open, the lawyers at the Justice

Department can just like read it too, right? Exactly. Part of the end game here is that the committee's chair, Benny Thompson, who's a Democrat from Mississippi, has indicated he does actually want to release all of these documents to the public at the very end. Early summer, is there a point where you believe, OK, we've got what we've got? We've got a report to the American public? Oh, no question. Our goal is to produce a report.

We would like that report to be as thorough as possible so that what occurred on January 6th will never happen again. And this is certainly something that could assist the Justice Department in any future prosecutions they decide to pursue. And it's kind of like leaving a whole paper trail for prosecutors to pick up on if they decide to do so. Is there a sense, though, that the Justice Department is doing its own thing? Because I remember in the wake of January 6th, and apologies if I don't have the latest information here, but I remember the Justice Department saying that they were going to

investigate this like all the way to the top. It seems like they are. In many ways, we have two parallel investigations here, one going through Congress and one going through prosecutors. Most of what we know publicly about the Justice Department's investigation so far relates to actually charging rioters who were in the Capitol that day and going down threads of that investigation. going down threads of that investigation. But in recent weeks, we've seen the Justice Department hint that they are looking into the actual planning of the rally itself, sending grand jury subpoenas to folks involved in planning the January 6th rally at the Capitol. And so it's something that folks are keeping a close eye on around here as they do start to make these moves

towards a broader investigation. And Nick, before we go today, as someone who follows this so closely, I just wonder for you, what are the big questions that are currently unanswered for you at this time? Well, some of the biggest questions for me are how exactly the committee is going to try to wrap up its investigation. I mean, they've so far, for example, held off on trying to call the former president to testify. It seems like a logical

step that if you're going to wrap up this investigation, you'd want to try to call him, or for that matter, whether you would try to call former Vice President Mike Pence, who through all this did resist pressure from the former president to intervene in the certification of the 2020 election and overturn the results. And stepping back a little bit, I'm curious to see how exactly the committee is going to present all of its findings to the public, right? We talked about how the committee has interviewed, you know, hundreds of witnesses, has all these thousands of documents and so on. How exactly can you package this into something that will both shed new light on what happened and also draw the attention of the American public? That's the question for the

committee. What impact, if anything, do you think, you know, regardless of how the committee packages this evidence. What impact do you think that this will have on Trump and on his base? We'll have to see what happens there. The former president has quite regularly criticized this committee and this investigation. He calls it the unselect committee. But the timing of its findings is particularly notable as the former president, you know, it seems to make all these moves towards running for another term. And so if they've released this report in the next year showing that, you know, the former president committed crimes in the course of trying to overturn the election, this is relatively politically explosive material

for the committee to release. And so whether or not this moves the political needle in the United States remains to be seen. But at the very least, it just adds more fuel to the fire. Okay, Nick, thank you so much for this. This was so helpful in catching us up on kind of where we are right now. So I'm very appreciative. Thank you.

Of course. All right. That is all for today. I'm Jamie Poisson. Thanks so much for listening. We'll talk to you tomorrow. Thank you.