Trump ignored the White House telephone rules: when Melania was angry with him, he called her from mobile security

In the Donald Trump White House, phones were a valuable commodity. According to a former White House aide, the then president liked to talk to everyone. CNN.

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“He answered all the calls,” the aide said. “Even interrupting national security briefings to make and answer calls.”

According to former Trump administration officials, the phone was his lifeline.

And the ex-president's phone habits became a problem for investigators on January 6th.

That's because the House Select Committee investigating the riot at the U.S. Capitol discovered an unusual hole in Trump's official White House phone log within hours, according to sources familiar with the House investigation - after he returned to White House house after speaking to his supporters at the Ellipse on January 6, 2021, until he spoke via video link to the nation from Rose Garden. And that has led investigators to look elsewhere — in other people's cell phones and possibly even Trump's own cell phones, though the committee has so far balked at that awkward move.

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The difficulty for the committee in keeping track of who and when Trump spoke to stems from his unusual phone habits during his tenure: according to multiple sources who have previously worked in the administration, the president often used several of his own phones, which occasionally came in and out of office. use to communicate with their supporters and even with family.

One former employee attributed Trump's phone habit to his unwillingness to be tapped (which is hard for the president in the White House to avoid when calling from a landline). Therefore, he often took the mobile phone of the nearest assistant or even a secret service agent to make a call.

Case in point: after 2018 story broke with Stormy DanielsTrump was on the golf course trying to reach his wife, Melania Trump, on her phone, but she didn't pick up, according to a source familiar with the matter. So he approached a Secret Service agent and instead used the agent's phone to try and contact her. Then the first lady answered the phone. According to this source, the agent did not like that his phone was being used in this way.

Sources familiar with the investigation have not yet reached any conclusions about the large gap in the phone records. Committee sources concede that Trump may have decided not to make or receive calls. There's also a chance the National Archives will find more records - on other people's phones - to explain the gaps.

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Several sources said former White House Deputy Chief of Staff Dan Scavino was a common channel for Trump's conversations, with the office "shouting distance" from the president. One source witnessed Scavino regularly hand his phone over to Trump to answer calls. The source describes Scavino as "the key to just about everything" given how much time he spent with the then president. Scavino's lawyer declined to comment.

Scavino, according to this source, had a work phone and a personal phone.

He was summoned by the committee on January 6. He is also suing Verizon over the committee's subpoena of his phone records. The lawsuit - still in its earliest stages - has temporarily prevented the phone company from providing his call logs and subscriber information to the House of Representatives.

According to former aides, people often reached Trump by calling his employees. For some callers, aides said it was easier to communicate through Chief of Staff Mark Meadows or even daughter Ivanka Trump. They suggested that Trump take a call from an ally who was waiting on the line, and he would either answer the call or wave them off with the back of his hand.

“He liked to talk to people he agreed with,” said another assistant.

In addition, Trump generally did not take his personal cell phone to the Oval Office, according to former New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie, who tried to contact him several times during the riot.

“First I called his secretary. She didn't answer the phone. And then I called his personal cell phone,” Christie said in an interview last year. - I didn't know where he was. I tried calling his cell phone and it went to voicemail."

Trump never called Christie back that day, the former governor said.

Trump did speak to House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy during the uprising, although this was not noted in the official call logs.

To appreciate how unprecedented Trump's presidential behavior on the phone was - and how he ran the White House in general - a former senior White House official describes an early chaotic process in which "there were hardly any records."

“In fact,” says this former official, “it never occurred to anyone to track people in and out of the Oval Office.”

According to another former White House official, "at least for a large period of time, most likely for the entire Trump presidency, there are no Oval Office visitor logs." Keeping such logs is not mandatory, but it has become the norm under previous administrations.

When General John Kelly became Trump's chief of staff in July 2017, he tried to clean up the White House phone calls, and according to a former White House official, his boss hated it. Kelly tried to keep call logs and monitor Trump's calls, but the president was outraged by the restrictions because he didn't want Kelly to know who he was talking to, the former official said.

In comparison, a person familiar with the matter says that in the previous administration, all calls went through the official White House channels - through the residence, the switchboard, the situation center and the telecom operator. There was no way around the hard limits.

“It just didn’t happen,” the source said. “There was no way around it.” And most of the calls were by appointment.

Also, according to the source, then-President Barack Obama would never have been allowed to use the phone of an aide or Secret Service agent to make calls. “God no,” the source said.

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