The curious wrong-number phone calls to Alabama Senator during the siege on the Capitol…

In researching for my previous diary about the insurrection, I studied timelines of events that were occurring inside the Capital, As the chamber inside the Capitol was being evacuated, the president makes a wrong-number call for Tommy Tuberville, calling Sen. Mike Lee instead:

14:26

President Trump called Senator Mike Lee, according to the Utah Republican who has provided the trial lawyers with a copy of a log from his mobile phone.

According to his office, he received a call from the White House switchboard number — and the call lasted four minutes. Mr Lee has said that apparently the call was meant for Alabama senator Tommy Tuberville, and that he handed his phone to his colleague.

Mr Tuberville told reporters that he informed Mr Trump that Mr Pence had been evacuated from the Senate floor. “I said: Mr President, they’ve taken the vice-president out. They want me to get off the phone, I gotta go.”

House impeachment managers say it is further evidence that the president knew how much danger his vice-president was in.

Read Lee’s later recall to a Salt Lake Dispatch reporter about the phone call here and his vehement complaint about the calls’ characterization later on.

Later that evening a second call was made, again mistakenly for Tuberville on Lee’s phone by Rudy Giuliani. Giuliani’s call was not taken by Lee but Giuliani left a message on Lee’s voicemail:

“Sen. Tuberville? Or I should say Coach Tuberville. This is Rudy Giuliani, the President’s lawyer,” he said according to to the transcript. “I’m calling you because I want to discuss with you how they’re trying to rush this hearing and how we need you, our Republican friends, to try to just slow it down so we can get these legislatures to get more information to you,” Giuliani said, referring to unfounded claims of voter fraud in the presidential election. “I know they’re reconvening at 8 tonight, but it … the only strategy we can follow is to object to numerous states and raise issues so that we get ourselves into tomorrow — ideally until the end of tomorrow.” Tuberville was unaware that Giuliani had tried to reach him until it was publicly reported, according to the source.

Curiously, MIke Lee tried to deny that the phone calls occurred with a non-denial denial.

Here is my question. Was there a Trump ally inside the Capital that day who would have alerted Trump to stop the siege before it occurred-to “call off the dogs”- if Pence had decided to do his bidding? Why would the crowd attack to stop proceedings if Pence were complying? Why did Trump speak until 1:10 PM and did he still have hope that his VP would help him? When was Pence’s release of a memo just before he convened the certification meeting to the press indicating he would follow the law and Constitution (approx. 12:59 PM) relayed to the president?

Connecting the dots here is difficult. It is not hard to believe that Trump relied on Rudy’s Rolodex for the wrong number and that Rudy would repeat the error later. But why Tuberville? The first message was anywhere from 4 to a reported 10 minutes long-the words used by Trump were only characterized by Tuberville, what was the full message? Were Tuberville or Jordan or someone else plants inside the Capital placed there to turn the siege off or on? Were there “burner” phones in the chamber that day? Finally, was the later Rudy call a ruse to help cover the earlier call’s intent. Did Lee hear something that would have made him try to deny the receipt of two wrong #’s from the coup leaders? Rudy’s message would seem to be more likely a “group call” that would be made to several allies and not just Tuberville — who else did Rudy call and if no one else, doesn’t that make these calls curiouser??

Just wondering.

Originally published at https://vincerizzo.substack.com on January 31, 2022.