- Trump tried to reach McConnell on the morning of January 6, according to White House call logs.
- But McConnell never called Trump back, the logs show.
- The January 6 committee is investigating the call log, first reported by the Washington Post.
On the morning of January 6, 2021, President Donald Trump tried to call Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell but the Kentucky Republican didn't answer or return his call, according to White House calls logs obtained by the House select committee investigating the Capitol riot. The call logs were first reported by the Washington Post and CBS News.
Trump first called McConnell at 9:16 a.m. At 10:40 a.m., the White House switchboard operator informed Trump that a message was left for McConnell.
According to the logs, McConnell never got back to Trump. A spokesperson for McConnell told The Post that the Republican senator declined Trump's call.
Trump placed several other calls that morning and spoke with White House officials including Mark Meadows, Stephen Miller and Nick Luna, his personal lawyer Rudy Giuliani, and members of Congress including Rep. Jim Jordan and Sen. David Perdue.
The logs show a seven-hour gap on January 6, the Post reported. The January 6 committee is investigating whether Trump communicated through "burner phones" during that period and whether there's been a "possible coverup" of the official White House records on January 6, per The Post.
McConnell has previously said the last conversation he had with Trump was in December 2020 after the senator had congratulated then-President elect Joe Biden for winning the election. For weeks, McConnell had remained silent about the election results as Trump's team had launched legal efforts to overturn them. But the Republican senator acknowledged Biden's win on the Senate floor after the Electoral College formalized his victory. The move outraged Trump, who was still trying to overturn the results.
Following McConnell's December 15, 2020 speech on the Senate floor, Trump called him immediately and "spewed expletives," according to a book by Washington Post journalists Bob Woodward and Robert Costa.
"And this is the thanks I got?" Trump asked. "You never really got me. You don't understand me."
"You lost the election. The Electoral College has spoken," McConnell said, before ending the call.
Trump's and McConnell's relationship has further soured since January 6. McConnell denounced the violence and later said Trump was partially responsible for the attack, though he voted to acquit the president in his impeachment trial. Since then, Trump has publicly lobbed insults at McConnell, who has largely avoided speaking about the former president.