ArcaMax

Character, according to an old saying, is defined by what you do when you think nobody’s looking. So, one might say, are a lot of criminal indictments.

That’s particularly true in Washington, where investigations of the Jan. 6, 2021, attack by a pro-Trump mob on the U.S. Capitol show how many secrets can be revealed when somebody keeps looking, especially if they have subpoena power.

Take, for example, the recent surge in Washington chatter about “burner phones.”

Fans of “The Wire,” HBO’s excellent police drama from the early 2000s, know “burners” to be the cheap cellphones that drug dealers, among others, can quickly throw away when they think the cops are on their trail.

Burners have turned up recently in connection with a very different sort of mystery, as first reported by CBS News and The Washington Post: an unexplained seven-hour gap in the White House phone logs for Jan. 6, 2021.

Ah, yes, that also happens to be the hours when the U.S. Capitol was being attacked by the pro-Trump mob. We know from numerous reports and firsthand accounts that the then-president held at that time with Vice President Mike Pence, House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy and Alabama Sen. Tommy Tuberville.

But alas, the phone log shows no phone calls from him in those critical hours. Did he borrow an aide’s mobile device? Or was he, perhaps, using a burner?

I, for one, found that possibility to be more likely than the former president’s statement to The Washington Post. He said he had never heard of the term “burner phone” and had no idea what it was.

That assertion was flatly contradicted by John Bolton, the president’s former national security adviser, who told CBS News that he had spoken in the past on burner phones as a way to avoid having one’s calls scrutinized.

But for now, the burner-phone caper may be the most consequential electronic mystery since the 18 1/2-minute tape gap of the Watergate scandal.

...continued

(c) 2022 CLARENCE PAGE DISTRIBUTED BY TRIBUNE MEDIA SERVICES, INC.