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      Ivanka Trump to testify before panel investigating Capitol attack

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      Ivanka Trump to testify before panel investigating Capitol attackDonald Trump’s eldest daughter, a former senior White House adviser, to speak virtually to committee about events of January 6 Ivanka Trump will testify before the January 6 committee on Tuesday.‘I didn’t win the election’: Trump admits defeat in session with historiansRead moreThe Guardian confirmed that former president Donald Trump’s oldest daughter, and former senior White House adviser, will speak to the panel virtually.Her testimony will come after that of her husband and fellow former presidential adviser, Jared Kushner, who spoke to the panel for more than six hours last week.After Kushner’s testimony, Jamie Raskin, a Maryland Democrat and a member of the committee, told the Guardian: “There’s a momentum to this process when there’s cooperation. When people see that others are doing the right thing, it gives them the courage to do the right thing.”A bipartisan Senate report linked seven deaths to the attack on the US Capitol on 6 January 2021, by supporters Donald Trump told to “fight like hell” in service of his attempt to overturn his defeat by Joe Biden.Trump was impeached for inciting an insurrection but acquitted when enough Republican senators stayed loyal.The House’s January 6 committee includes two Republicans, Liz Cheney of Wyoming and Adam Kinzinger of Illinois.As the Guardian reported this week, the committee has identified Ivanka Trump as a senior adviser who would have known her father’s attempt to block certification of electoral college results at the Capitol was unlawful.Referring to a law professor who presented the plan to block certification, a federal judge recently said it was “more likely than not that President Trump and Dr [John] Eastman dishonestly conspired to obstruct the joint session of Congress on January 6 2021”, and thereby committed multiple felonies.The committee also hopes Ivanka Trump might help explain a more-than seven-hour gap in White House call logs for 6 January.Ivanka Trump’s role in her father’s administration has long been a lightning rod for controversy. On Monday, the watchdog group Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (Crew) said: “Here’s a question Ivanka Trump can answer: how did she and Jared make up to $640m while working ‘for free’ in the White House?”TopicsIvanka TrumpJared KushnerDonald TrumpUS Capitol attackUS politicsnewsReuse this content More

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      ‘January 6 was a real wake-up call’: US unions fight to save democracy

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      ‘January 6 was a real wake-up call’: US unions fight to save democracyLabor leaders view this year’s elections – and 2024’s – with special urgency, as a goal-line stand to preserve America’s democracy Many union leaders used to pooh-pooh talk about saving democracy, according t0 Shane Larson, the Communications Workers of America’s director of government affairs. All that changed after the January 6 assault on the Capitol and after many Republicans pushed to overturn Biden’s victory in several states.The latest threat to democracy? A Trump-backed candidate willing to ‘find extra votes’Read more“Just a few years ago, some union leaders would complain, ‘Why are we focusing on these do-good democratic issues?’ They’d say we need to focus exclusively on labor rights and jobs, jobs, jobs,” Larson said. “Now no one is complaining about this at all. There’s a real recognition that the entire labor movement has to be involved in this effort, that we have to do something for our democracy or we can lose it.“January 6 was a real wake-up call,” Larson said. “Part of our effort is to hold accountable a number of insurrectionists running for some of these offices.” He mentioned the Arizona and Georgia secretary of state races in particular.With their ability to mobilize tens of thousands of union foot soldiers, unions are one of the nation’s most powerful political forces, and labor leaders view this year’s election – and 2024’s – with special urgency, as a goal-line stand to preserve America’s democracy.Traditionally focusing on presidential and congressional races, unions this year plan to focus far more than usual on state and local races – for instance, to prevent the election of secretaries of state and election commissioners who have embraced Trump’s “big lie” and signaled they might overturn their state’s 2024 vote results if the Democratic presidential nominee is ahead.Unite Here, the hotel workers’ union, is known for being one of the nation’s most politically active unions, and this year it has expanded its political ambitions – not just to elect worker-friendly candidates, but to help preserve America’s embattled democracy.For this year’s elections, Unite Here intends to build on its performance in 2020 when it had 500 full-time canvassers going door to door in Arizona, helping Joe Biden win that state. It also had an army of union members canvassing in Philadelphia, helping deliver Pennsylvania to Biden. That 300,000-member union later sent 200 canvassers to Georgia to help Raphael Warnock and Jon Ossoff win, giving Democrats control of the Senate.Unite Here has broadened its effort this year, with a stepped-up focus on protecting voting rights – and democracy itself. It is already educating voters in Arizona and Georgia about how to navigate around newly enacted voter restrictions. Like many other unions, it hopes to provide a flock of poll watchers to help ensure that voters, especially voters of color, are not intimidated by the promised army of Trumpist poll watchers. To help Democrats retain control of the Senate, Unite Here plans to deploy hundreds of canvassers to help Mark Kelly of Arizona, Catherine Cortez Masto of Nevada and other Democratic senators win re-election.“Our goal is to get back to what we had in 2020, a steady ramp-up to have 500 people moving around, going door to door, reigniting people to vote,” said Gwen Mills, Unite Here’s secretary-treasurer. “The work of democracy is labor-intensive, is people-intensive.”Union leaders see two parallel strategies to preserve American democracy – one is to battle against efforts that roll back voting rights, reduce the political voice of minorities and enable hyper-partisans to skew, even overturn vote counts. The other strategy is to ensure that Democrats win key battleground states, especially longtime union strongholds Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin.“There is no way that Donald Trump or the next Donald Trump or any anti-worker candidate can win the White House without winning those states,” said Steve Rosenthal, former political director of the AFL-CIO, the nation’s main labor federation.Rosenthal said that if union households accounted for 25% to 30% of the vote in those states, as they did a quarter-century ago, instead of 15% 20% as they do now, Trump could not have won those states in 2016, nor win them in 2024. Rosenthal has founded a group, In Union, that is reaching out to hundreds of thousands of former union members in Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin – they perhaps lost their jobs and union membership when their factories closed. In Union seeks to explain to these voters which candidates are pro-worker and which aren’t. Thus far In Union has communicated with 1.2 million voters in those three states (including many non-union members who support unions) — and hopes to get funding to reach out to another 3 million.Backed by unions and foundations, In Union seeks to build trust with those voters and explain, for instance, how Joe Biden would do more for blue-collar workers than Trump would. “What these voters are yearning for is a place they can go to to get information they trust,” Rosenthal said. “There’s a huge role for unions to play in this right now.”Many labor leaders say Democratic lawmakers have hurt their party’s cause by doing little in recent decades to stop union membership from declining – a trend Joe Biden seems eager to reverse and many Republicans seem eager to accelerate. Unions often help Democrats by explaining to workers which party will do more for them. Unions have also helped prevent workers from growing resentful and embracing rightwing populists like Trump by helping assure economic gains for workers and by reducing racial resentment among white workers.“Unions remain the only set of organizations in the US that can help prevent working-class whites from going conservative,” said Jake Rosenfeld, a sociology professor at Washington University.Paul Spink, the head of the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees in Wisconsin, said one way to help save democracy would be to re-elect Tony Evers, Wisconsin’s Democratic governor. Spink said Republicans have so gerrymandered Wisconsin’s legislature that they are close to having a veto-proof supermajority even though Republicans often win less than 50% of the statewide vote.“In recent months, there’ve been at least five or six bills the legislature passed to limit voting rights and undermine elections,” Spink said. “We’re trying very hard to keep a Democratic governor in this state to block those.”Randi Weingarten, president of the American Federation of Teachers, says her union fights to protect democracy in many ways, for example, by opposing book bans and defending teachers who face punishment for teaching about racism.“In many countries, labor unions have been a bulwark against authoritarianism,” Weingarten said.She said her union might endorse some non-Trumpist Republicans like Lynn Cheney, who oppose the “big lie” and undermining fair elections. That way, in places where Democrats have scant chance of winning, her union might help elect Republicans who oppose many Republicans’ increasing embrace of authoritarianism.Labor’s pro-democracy efforts have taken many forms. The Service Employees International Union ran internet ads that criticized Coca-Cola, Delta Air Lines and Home Depot for donating to GOP lawmakers who backed new voting restrictions. Unite Here co-sponsored a “freedom ride” of buses to Washington to urge senators to enact new voting rights legislation.“I feel that work for democracy should be year-round,” said Unite Here’s Mills. “We try to keep a drum beat year in and year out: do democracy at work, do democracy at the doors, do democracy at the polls, do democracy in the capital.”Unite Here trains hotel workers to become leaders, with one winning a seat on the Phoenix city council. It pushed lawmakers to slam the Cyber Ninjas’ much-derided election review in Arizona. United Here says its canvassers knocked on 1m doors in Arizona in 2020 and talked with 125,000 infrequent voters, many of whom voted for Biden. It boasts that that helped assure Biden’s 10,457-vote victory in the state.“I want other unions to have more people canvassing in these races, to do it in every state,” said Susan Minato, co-president of Unite Here Local 11 in Arizona and southern California. “That would be huge.”TopicsUS unionsUS Capitol attackUS politicsfeaturesReuse this content More

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      Capitol attack rioter gets 3.5 years in prison for illegal possession of guns

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      Capitol attack rioter gets 3.5 years in prison for illegal possession of gunsSamuel Fisher was also a self-declared dating coach who sold a $150 package of misogynistic tips for men to pick up women A rioter who believed the QAnon conspiracy theory and joined the insurrection by extremist supporters of Donald Trump at the US Capitol on 6 January 2021, as they attempted to overturn his election defeat, has been sentenced in New York to 3.5 years in prison.Samuel Fisher, 33, was sentenced on Monday after being charged with illegal possession of firearms, including a modified semi-automatic AR-15-style assault rifle, a “ghost gun” pistol, a shotgun, and 11 pre-loaded high capacity magazines at an apartment in the upscale Upper West Side neighborhood of Manhattan.He had pleaded guilty to one count of criminal possession of a weapon in the second degree.For years, Fisher established a prolific online presence, the authorities said.Under the alias Brad Holiday, Fisher posted photos of himself with firearms on Facebook and YouTube. In one, Fisher posed in front of a flag that said “Don’t tread on Trump. Keep America great” while grinning and holding a pistol.“Can’t wait to bring a liberal back to this freedom palace,” he wrote as his caption. Behind him was a rifle and a shotgun.Fisher was also a self-declared dating coach who sold a $150 package of misogynistic supposed tips and tricks for men to pick up women, called “Attraction Accelerator”, the New York Times reported.“How to use online dating to build abundance of women! Never feel that you can’t get women again…with online dating you’ll ALWAYS be getting laid,” his website said.In a video posted online, Fisher said, “Is Satanism a good thing? Should we conjure demons to get our goals met like the Left does?”He added: “Are women trustworthy in 2020? You tell me. I’ll tell you, No.”Prior to the January 6 insurrection aimed, on the urging of Trump at a rally prior, at preventing Congress from certifying Joe Biden’s victory over Trump, Fisher espoused QAnon conspiracy theories online and claims that the 2020 election was “stolen”.In reference to a pro-Trump, so-called Stop the Steal rally, the authorities said Fisher told a Facebook friend: “Get a firearm and go, lol, its 1776 time dawg.”He also went on to write online: “The Deep State is arrested and hanged on the White House lawn for High Treason. We rebuild America with a government for the people by the people…Patriot show up in the millions with guns. They execute all the treasonous members of government and rebuild.”Trump believed a “deep state” secret shadow government existed to thwart his agenda.In 2020, after attending the deadly January 6 riots on Capitol Hill, Fisher wrote on his social media accounts that “people died” but it was great, according to court records reviewed by the New York Times.“Seeing cops literally run…was the coolest thing I’ve ever seen in my life,” he continued.Fisher was arrested on 20 January 2021, outside his Upper East Side apartment in New York City in connection with his involvement with the Capitol attacks. Police found a shotgun, machetes and over a thousand rounds of ammunition in his vehicle, according to court records.In a statement on Monday, Manhattan district attorney Alvin Bragg said: “Samuel Fisher is a dangerous conspiracy theorist who participated in one of the gravest attacks on our democracy. Not only did he threaten to commit violence against his fellow citizens, he had the potential to follow through with his arsenal of advanced weaponry and ammunition.”TopicsUS Capitol attackUS politicsNew YorkDonald TrumpUS elections 2020newsReuse this content More

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      Capitol attack panel scores two big wins as it inches closer to Trump’s inner circle

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      Capitol attack panel scores two big wins as it inches closer to Trump’s inner circle House select committee seizes momentum as it embarks on final push to conclude evidence-gathering phase of inquiryThe House select committee investigating the January 6 Capitol attack is moving to capitalize on new momentum as it embarks on its final push to complete the roughly one hundred remaining depositions and conclude the evidence-gathering phase of the inquiry.The panel has scored two major wins in recent days: more than six hours of testimony from Donald Trump’s son-in-law and adviser Jared Kushner, and a conclusion by a federal judge that the former president committed felonies to overturn the 2020 election.Members on the select committee believe Kushner’s cooperation might prompt other Trump officials to assist the investigation as the panel inches closer to Trump’s inner circle and the former president himself, according to sources familiar with the matter.The panel has also been buoyed by the federal court ruling that said Trump “more likely than not” violated the law over 6 January, reaffirming the purpose of the investigation and making it harder for Trump’s allies to defy the inquiry, the sources said.And members on the select committee believe that opening contempt of Congress proceedings against the Trump aides Peter Navarro and Dan Scavino for ignoring their subpoenas, will reinforce the message that the panel will punish non-compliance, the sources said.“There’s a momentum to this process when there’s cooperation,” Jamie Raskin, one of the congressmen on the panel, said of the burst of recent activity. “When people see that others are doing the right thing, it gives them the courage to do the right thing.”The select committee has now conducted more than 800 depositions and interviews, obtained almost 90,000 documents and followed up on more than 435 tips received through the tip line on its website, since it started its work in earnest last August.House investigators also have more than 100 depositions remaining on the schedule, the sources said, including one with a key witness who is expected to reveal connections between the Oath Keepers and the Proud Boys militia groups and the Capitol attack.That deposition – slated for 5 April – would represent another breakthrough and could play a big role in establishing for the select committee whether Trump oversaw a criminal conspiracy as part of his efforts to overturn the 2020 election.It is so crucial, the sources said, since it could form part of the evidence to connect the militia groups that stormed the Capitol to the organizers of the rallies that immediately preceded the attack – who in turn are slowly being linked to the Trump White House.But that testimony has been on the books for several weeks, and the greater challenge for the select committee remains to resolve ongoing cooperation talks with Rudy Giuliani, Trump’s one-time attorney, and Ivanka Trump, the former president’s daughter.The select committee has a special interest in Giuliani since he was in close contact with Trump as he oversaw the implementation of the scheme to have the thenvice-president, Mike Pence, stop the certification of Joe Biden’s election win and return Trump to office.The Guardian first reported that Giuliani was poised to cooperate with the investigation and reveal the roles played by Republican members of Congress with caveats – such as not discussing matters covered by executive privilege – that are not yet resolved.House investigators have also identified Ivanka Trump as a key person of interest since she appeared to have learned before 6 January that the scheme to have Pence stop the certification was unlawful – but and might shed light on why the former president still went ahead with the plan.Testimony that speaks to whether Trump knew what he was pressing Pence to do was unlawful – and when he knew it – is a central question for the panel as it seeks to establish whether Trump’s actions should warrant a criminal referral to the justice department.The panel has also privately noted in recent days that Ivanka Trump might be able to shed light on who Trump was calling from the White House as the Capitol attack unfolded, after call logs from that day showed a near eight-hour gap in communications.The Guardian has revealed at least one of Trump’s phone calls on 6 January – when he dialed the Republican senator Mike Lee trying to reach Senator Tommy Tuberville – was routed through an official White House phone and should have been in the call logs but was not.As the select committee moves towards wrapping up the evidence-gathering phase of the investigation, the hope among its members is that the recent momentum will carry the inquiry through to public hearings that are now expected to start in mid-May.The panel remains undecided whether to demand cooperation from Ginni Thomas, the wife of the supreme court justice Clarence Thomas, after the Washington Post and CBS reported she pressed Trump’s former chief of staff Mark Meadows in texts to overturn the 2020 election.The issue centers on the fact that several members on the select committee did not know about Thomas’s texts – turned over by Meadows months ago – until news reports brought them to public attention, according to two sources familiar with the matter.Some members wanted to call her in to ask her about the texts, but others who had discussed the issue months ago demurred, arguing that Thomas, a far-right activist, was unlikely to assist the panel and would try to turn the inquiry into a political circus.A spokesperson for the panel did not respond to a request for comment.The select committee may yet request cooperation from Thomas, but House investigators are pursuing myriad lines of inquiry and whether to ask her for voluntary assistance or demand documents and testimony pursuant to a subpoena is just one strand, the sources said.TopicsUS Capitol attackUS politicsDonald TrumpTrump administrationJared KushnerIvanka TrumpnewsReuse this content More

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      Man caught with ‘small armory’ ahead of Capitol riot sentenced to nearly four years in prison

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      Man caught with ‘small armory’ ahead of Capitol riot sentenced to nearly four years in prisonJudge said Lonnie Coffman’s weaponry showed he had come to Washington ‘to do battle’ An Alabama man found with a “small armory” of guns, ammunition and molotov cocktails in his pickup truck ahead of the 6 January 2021 US Capitol riot was sentenced to almost four years in prison, one of the stiffest sentences so far handed down.US district judge Colleen Kollar-Kotelly said the 46-month sentence reflected the seriousness of the charges against Lonnie Coffman, 72, who had pleaded guilty to possessing unregistered firearms.Coffman’s sentence is the third-longest for a Capitol riot defendant, after sentences of 63 months and 51 months to people who attacked police officers during the assault on Congress by former President Donald Trump’s supporters.Of the more than 100 defendants who have been sentenced so far, most have received probationary sentences or short jail sentences of less than two months.“He had a small armory in his truck, ready to do battle,” Kollar-Kotelly said during a sentencing hearing. “I still can’t get over why he had this.”Coffman has been in custody since his arrest on 6 January and will get credit for time served.Coffman’s lawyer argued that further incarceration was not warranted in light of his age, health, Vietnam war veteran status, remorse and acceptance of responsibility.Police officers arrested Coffman near the Capitol after noticing the handle of a gun in his pickup truck while they were responding to pipe bombs left outside the headquarters of the Democratic National Committee and Republican National Committee, both of which are near the Capitol.Inside Coffman’s truck, officers found an AR-15-style rifle, a shotgun, a crossbow, several machetes, smoke grenades and 11 molotov cocktails. They also found a note with the name of at least one member of Congress and a judge, with the notation “bad guy”.Prosecutors said at the time that the combination of weapons and political messages “suggest that these weapons were intended to be used in an effort to violently attack our elected representatives”.About 800 people face criminal charges relating to the storming of the Capitol by Trump supporters, which forced lawmakers to go into hiding during the certification over President Joe Biden’s election victory.TopicsUS Capitol attacknewsReuse this content More

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      Jared Kushner ‘voluntarily’ gives Capitol attack panel information in testimony

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      Jared Kushner ‘voluntarily’ gives Capitol attack panel information in testimonyKushner becomes first member of Donald Trump’s family to speak to investigators Jared Kushner testified on Thursday before the House select committee investigating the 6 January attack on the Capitol, becoming the first member of Donald Trump’s family to speak to investigators.Democrat Elaine Luria, a member of the select committee, confirmed that Kushner appeared before the panel “voluntarily”, although she would not provide details on what he said.“He was able to voluntarily provide information to us to verify, substantiate, provide his own take on this different reporting,” Luria told MSNBC. “So it was really valuable for us to have the opportunity to speak to him.”Kushner appeared virtually before investigators and spoke to committee counsel, two sources told the Guardian. A spokesperson for the January 6 committee declined to comment about Kushner’s testimony.Kushner is married to Trump’s eldest daughter, Ivanka Trump, and he served as a senior adviser to the former president. However, Kushner was not at the White House on 6 January as the Capitol attack unfolded because he was traveling back to Washington after a trip to Saudi Arabia.One source said before Kushner’s interview that investigators planned to ask him about a text sent by Ginni Thomas, the conservative activist who is married to the supreme court justice Clarence Thomas, in the weeks after the election.The Washington Post and CBS News reported last week that Thomas sent a text to Mark Meadows, Trump’s former chief of staff, on 13 November that seemed to reference Kushner. “Just forwarded to yr gmail an email I sent Jared this am. Sidney Powell & improved coordination now will help the cavalry come and Fraud exposed and America saved,” Thomas wrote.Kushner may have also faced questions from the committee about Trump’s efforts to spread baseless claims of widespread fraud in the 2020 presidential election. According to Bob Woodward and Robert Costa’s book Peril, Kushner was involved in conversations about how to delicately tell Trump that he had lost the election to Joe Biden.The White House said Biden would not assert executive privilege over the testimony of Kushner, allowing him to speak to the committee about conversations he may have had with Trump in the days and weeks before the Capitol attack.“The president has spoken to the fact that January 6 was one of the darkest days in our country’s history and that we must have a full accounting of what happened to ensure that it never occurs again,” the White House communications director, Kate Bedingfield, said on Tuesday. “As a result, the White House has decided not to assert executive privilege over the testimony of Jared Kushner and Ivanka Trump.”Asked whether Biden’s decision had been communicated to Kushner’s team, Bedingfield said: “I won’t speak to private communication between our attorneys and his.”Ivanka Trump has said she is in talks to voluntarily appear before the committee, after the Guardian reported that the committee was considering issuing a subpoena to compel her to testify.In a January letter to Trump, Thompson said the committee wanted to question her about what she witnessed in the Oval Office on 6 January. According to testimony from Keith Kellogg, the former national security adviser to Mike Pence, Trump witnessed a conversation during which her father pressured the vice-president to overturn the results of the election. Kellogg also testified that Trump made multiple attempts to convince her father to take action to quell the violence at the Capitol.Thompson requested Trump’s “voluntary cooperation” with the committee, writing: “We respect your privacy, and our questions will be limited to issues relating to January 6th, the activities that contributed to or influenced events on January 6th, and your role in the White House during that period.”Thompson initially proposed that Trump speak to the committee on 3 or 4 February, but those dates came and went without any progress. It remains unclear when Trump might testify or if she will provide any substantive information to the committee.Hugo Lowell contributed to this reportTopicsUS Capitol attackJared KushnerHouse of RepresentativesUS politicsnewsReuse this content More

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      Trump claims ignorance of ‘burner phones’. Here’s how they work

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      Trump claims ignorance of ‘burner phones’. Here’s how they workDisposable phones may appeal to anyone trying to hide their identity – whether a criminal or an activist Let’s say you’re the president of the United States. You’re coordinating with a team of shady lawyers, elected officials, and political extremists to pull off a coup at the nation’s Capitol. And let’s just assume – in this hypothetical scenario – that you don’t want there to be a record of your highly incriminating calls. You’d probably want to use a burner phone.Investigators are now asking whether this matches what happened in the White House on 6 January 2021. The Washington Post and CBS News reported on Tuesday that a House investigation had found a seven-hour-and-37-minute gap in Donald Trump’s official call logs that day, during which hundreds of his supporters unleashed a deadly rampage at the US Capitol.Trump has pleaded ignorance, claiming in a statement to the outlets: “I have no idea what a burner phone is, to the best of my knowledge I have never even heard the term.” But the president’s former national security adviser John Bolton has disputed this, saying Trump used the phrase several times, in discussions about how to avoid having calls scrutinized.Either way, it’s important that all of us – including the president – understand what a burner phone is and does.A burner phone is a simple idea: a disposable phone, typically purchased prepaid and without a contract, that someone buys to make calls or send messages over a short period of time before “burning” the phone.Who uses them? In the popular imagination, burner phones are associated with crime. As Detective Carlton Lassiter quipped in the American sitcom Psych: “The only people who use these are low-life criminals, like drug dealers, terrorists, and people with subpar credit.” Breaking Bad’s antihero drug lord Walter White frequently uses cheap flip phones to make calls before snapping them in half. And in The Wire, Bernard, a drug hustler, visits convenience stores to buy prepaid phones for the rest of his organization.Revealed: Trump used White House phone for call on January 6 that was not on official logRead moreBut burner phones are also used by activists protesting police brutality, Hong Kongers trying to evade Covid rules, cheating spouses, teenagers defying their parents and tourists avoiding roaming charges abroad. In short, we live in a time when mobile phones are so cheap and easy to get that anyone can use burners.Jake Moore, a cybersecurity expert and former police forensics officer in the UK, told the Guardian that burner phones can be “very difficult” for law enforcement to trace.Keeping a phone “clean” starts with keeping it disconnected from the internet. Expert users never carry the burner phone and their primary phones with them at the same time.“Your phone is a tracking device,” said the security expert. “If you are moving around with a burner phone and you’ve still got your other phone with you, then law enforcement can do some triangulation on where you were.”A burner phone can also be revealed by the people it contacts. “If a burner phone is speaking and contacting another phone, that other phone will have call records that connect the two,” said Moore. To maximize secrecy, the people you’re contacting should also use burner phones.According to the former cop, the most important burner phone principle is to discard it and replace it constantly. But not everyone remembers to do this. When he was a police officer, “often we would find a ton of these burner phones in a property”, he said. While snapping a flip phone looks cool on TV, properly “burning” a phone requires destroying the sim card, said Moore. Some people go to more dangerous lengths, including microwaving phones.There are some software alternatives to burner phones: the smartphone app Burner generates new phone numbers for users, and Signal is an example of a strongly encrypted messaging app.But while using these apps, “your phone is still emitting lots of data, especially location,” said Moore. “So it’s not a complete burner way of doing things.”Trump discussed ‘burner phones’ several times, John Bolton saysRead moreSo if someone were using a burner phone to orchestrate a coup from the White House, could law enforcement triangulate the user? While it might be possible from a technical standpoint, the greater barriers might be legal ones.“You’ve got to have a warrant to get that information on that particular person, which isn’t easy to do from a threat actor point of view, because they would have to go to prove why they need it through the courts, to the telecom provider, to get that information.” For the user, the biggest obstacle to burner phones is that they’re a huge hassle. Early in his term, Trump turned down a more secure phone, preferring to hang on to his favorite old Android phone. It wouldn’t necessarily be easy for the US president to keep switching burner phones, either.“You’re starting to kill the convenience,” said Moore. “You’re going to have to tell your nearest and dearest of the new number each time. But how can you trust it? If I get a message from Donald Trump saying this is Donald Trump’s new burner phone number, I’m going to suspect that it’s not.”TopicsDonald TrumpUS Capitol attacknewsReuse this content More

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      Revealed: Trump used White House phone for call on January 6 that was not on official log

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      Revealed: Trump used White House phone for call on January 6 that was not on official logTrump’s call to Republican senator should have been reflected in presidential call log on day of Capitol attack but wasn’t Donald Trump used an official White House phone to place at least one call during the Capitol attack on January 6 last year that should have been reflected in the internal presidential call log from that day but was not, according to two sources familiar with the matter.The former president called the phone of a Republican senator, Mike Lee, with a number recorded as 202-395-0000, a placeholder number that shows up when a call is incoming from a number of White House department phones, the sources said.The number corresponds to an official White House phone and the call was placed by Donald Trump himself, which means the call should have been recorded in the internal presidential call log that was turned over to the House select committee investigating the Capitol attack.Trump discussed ‘burner phones’ several times, John Bolton saysRead moreTrump’s call to Lee was reported at the time, as well as its omission from the call log, by the Washington Post and CBS. But the origin of the call as coming from an official White House phone, which has not been previously reported, raises the prospect of tampering or deletion by Trump White House officials.It also appears to mark perhaps the most serious violation of the Presidential Record Act – the statute that mandates preservation of White House records pertaining to a president’s official duties – by the Trump White House concerning January 6 records to date.A spokesperson for Trump did not immediately respond to a request for comment.Trump called Lee at 2.26pm on January 6 through the official 202-395-0000 White House number, according to call detail records reviewed by the Guardian and confirmation by the two sources, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss sensitive matters.The call was notable as Trump mistakenly dialed Lee thinking it was the number for Republican Senator Tommy Tuberville. Lee passed the phone to Tuberville, who told Trump Mike Pence had just been removed from the Senate chamber as rioters stormed the Capitol.But Trump’s call to Lee was not recorded in either the presidential daily diary or the presidential call log – a problem because even though entries in the daily diary are discretionary, according to several current and former White House officials, the call log is not.The presidential daily diary is a retrospective record of the president’s day produced by aides in the Oval Office, who have some sway to determine whether a particular event was significant enough to warrant its inclusion, the officials said.But the presidential call log, typically generated from data recorded when calls are placed by the White House operators, is supposed to be a comprehensive record of all incoming and outgoing calls involving the president through White House channels, the officials said.The fact that Trump’s call to Lee was routed through an official White House phone with a 202-395 prefix – either through a landline in the West Wing, the White House residence or a “work” cellphone – means details of that call should have been on the call log.The only instance where a call might not be reflected on the unclassified presidential call log, the officials said, would be if the call was classified, which would seem to be unlikely in the case of the call to Lee. The absence of Trump’s call to Lee suggests a serious breach in protocol and possible manipulation, the officials said.It was not immediately clear how a Trump White House official might obfuscate or tamper with the presidential call log, or who might have the authority to make such manipulations.Trump’s calls on January 6 might not have been recorded in the presidential call log if he used his personal phone or the cellphones of aides, the officials said, and Trump sometimes called people with the cellphone of his then White House deputy chief of staff, Dan Scavino.But multiple current and former White House officials have noted that a copy of the call log – alongside the president’s daily schedule and the presidential line-by-line document – might be provided to Oval Office operations to help compile the presidential daily diary.That could lead to a situation where records are vulnerable to tampering, since the presidential daily diary and call log needs approval by a senior White House official before they can be sent to the White House office of records management, the officials said.And by the time of January 6, two former Trump White House officials said, there was scope for political interference in records preservation, with no White House staff secretary formally appointed after Derek Lyons’ departure on 18 December.The White House Communications Agency has also not been immune to political influence, the select committee revealed last year, when it found evidence the agency produced a letter that was intended to be used to pressure states to decertify Joe Biden’s election win.Trump’s call to Lee was not the only call missing from an unexplained, seven-hour gap in the presidential call log that day. Trump, for instance, also connected with House minority leader Kevin McCarthy as the Capitol attack unfolded.The presidential daily diary and presidential call log were turned over to the select committee by the National Archives after the supreme court refused a last-ditch request from Trump to block the release of White House documents to the panel.TopicsDonald TrumpUS Capitol attackUS politicsHouse of RepresentativesnewsReuse this content More