Trump worried about John Kelly monitoring his calls on the White House switchboard and told people to hang up and call him on his cell: report
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- President Trump started switching calls over to his cellphone while in office, people told CNN.
- He didn't like that John Kelly, the chief of staff, monitored the White House switchboard.
- Trump would "often tell people to hang up and call him back on his cellphone," CNN reported.
Amid confusion over a seven-hour gap in the White House phone logs on the day of the January 6 insurrection, a new report from CNN sheds light on how President Donald Trump would move calls to his cellphone.
Although White House officials are supposed to use secure lines of communication, Trump made a habit of rejecting the in-house phone system in favor of his cellphone, CNN reported, citing people familiar with Trump's phone behavior.
John Kelly, Trump's chief of staff from July 2017 to January 2019, monitored the White House switchboard as part of his efforts to streamline communication and limit the number of outside voices trying to influence Trump's opinion.
One of Kelly's goals was to get Trump to stop using his cell so much, but CNN's sources said his switchboard sleuthing had the opposite effect.
"Trump hated people knowing who he spoke to, including from the residence at night when they went through the switchboard," a former Trump official told CNN. So he would tell those who called him on a White House landline to hang up and call him back on his cellphone, CNN reported.
In the context of the missing January 6 phone logs, his use of a cellphone may partially explain why calls corroborated by witnesses — such as one to Vice President Mike Pence from the Oval Office that morning — didn't show up.
Trump used the switchboard while in the White House residence, but he rarely used it while in the Oval Office, CNN reported, citing people familiar with Trump's phone usage. He also had staffers place calls for him on various landlines and mobile phones, rather than going through the switchboard.
Clashes over Trump's cellphone use were a feature of the early stages of his presidency, with a 2018 Politico report describing how he used a phone without any encryption or security features to hide his calls from foreign intelligence agencies.