Trump's official White House photographer was told 'no photographs' as the Capitol came under siege

• House January 6 investigators said there was little record of Trump's actions on January 6.
• The presidential diary was "silent" about Trump's behavior on January 6, Rep. Elaine Luria said.

On January 6, 2021, then-President Donald Trump's official White House photographer wanted to do her job. As a mob of Trump supporters stormed the Capitol, the photographer wanted to document the sitting president because, as she put it, it was "very important" for history.

But the instruction to the official White House photographer, Shealah Craighead, was clear: "No photographs."

For the famously ratings-conscious Trump, it was a rare moment of eschewing a camera lens.

On Thursday, the House committee investigating the January 6 attack on the Capitol revealed that Craighead recalled she was blocked in her duties as the panel sought to explain the lack of official documentation about Trump's actions during the insurrection.

"Despite the lack of photos or an official record, we learned what President Trump was doing while he was watching TV in the dining room" outside the Oval Office, said Rep. Elaine Luria, a Virginia Democrat serving on the House January 6 committee.

The House committee did not identify Craighead by name, but she served as the official White House photographer from 2017 until Trump left office in early 2021.

Luria said there was similarly a lack of activity on Trump's call log, with no official record of the former president receiving or placing a call between 11:06 a.m. and shortly before 7 p.m. (Trump's onetime acting White House chief of staff, Mick Mulvaney, asserted on Twitter that the committee referenced the call log of the residence, not the Oval Office.)

But Luria said the presidential daily diary was "also silent" in the critical afternoon hours leading up to Trump's recorded message telling Capitol rioters, "Go home. We love you, you're very special."

Andrew Weissmann, a onetime top prosecutor in Special Counsel Robert Mueller's investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 election, described the lack of documentation as a "smoking gun."

On Twitter during the Thursday hearing, Weissmann wrote: "Missing call logs and ordering no photos. Why? What didn't he want to see: no record of his leading a coup."

During the riot, rather than attempting to mobilize the military or law enforcement to respond to the Capitol, Trump asked for a list of Republican senators to call and dialed Rudy Giuliani, Luria said.

Luria addressed the lack of official documentation during the House committee's eighth public hearing, which is focusing on Trump's actions in the critical 187 minutes between the breach of the Capitol and his recorded message to supporters. She led the hearing alongside Rep. Adam Kinzinger, an Illinois Republican who referred to Trump's January 6 video as the "now infamous 'go home' message."