Footage by British documentarian Alex Holder is providing the January 6 committee with a wealth of new evidence and now he’s even revealing that former President Donald Trump made a mysterious phone call to Russian President Vladimir Putin right before the 2020 presidential election.

That’s according to Insider. Holder, in an interview with Politico, said he was scheduled to film an interview with the former president on October 25, 2020. He’d been filming Trump and his family in the months prior to the Capitol insurrection.

But on that particular day, Holder found himself with extra time to fill because the interview was promptly canceled.

“My memory is that the chief of staff sort of came over and said that the interview couldn’t happen today because the president was on the phone,” he said.

“I believe, if I remember correctly, that he said he was on the phone to the president of Russia, Vladimir Putin, which is why the interview has to be postponed.”

Insider reports an official readout of the call has not been made public.

But Trump’s spokesperson, Liz Harrington, is rebutting the claim in a statement to Insider.

“This is a totally made up story, but it doesn’t stop the Fake News from running with another Russia, Russia, Russia hoax,” she said.

“Meanwhile, Biden has given everything to Putin, and made Moscow richer because of the Biden government’s anti-American energy policies,” Harrington said, in an apparent attempt to link Biden’s energy policies with high fuel policies that Russia is profiting from.

It would be nice to say Harrington is wrong about this, but there is some credibility to what she’s saying, I’m going to keep this brief because that’s not the story I’m focusing on here. However, according to MSNBC and Bloomberg News, the Biden administration was “initially impressed” that sanctions imposed during the Ukraine invasion, followed by Western corporations’ willingness to divest have definitely impacted the Russian economy. But these sanctions are “exacerbating inflation” and “punishing ordinary Russians more than Putin and his allies.” Meanwhile, the Russian energy sector is plugging right along.

MSNBC reports:

“To the contrary, as The New York Times reported last Monday, ‘Russia’s revenues from fossil fuels’ have soared over the course of the war. While the country’s overall energy exports have declined by volume, the report notes that ‘surging prices have more than canceled out the effects of that decline. The Kremlin is generating more revenue than it spends making war against Ukraine, and new, stricter sanctions targeting Russian energy that are due to come online soon may come too late to shape the outcome of that conflict.”

I am in no way fond of Liz Harrington. She’s little more than a hack for Trump, but really the above is worth noting. Now, however, I’m going back to the original topic of this article and going to note that when this phone call occurred, Trump was campaigning in New England. According to Holder, the phone call to Putin was made during a flight from New Hampshire to Maine.

Ironically, Trump made the call during the time he was pushing all kinds of baseless claims that his then-opponent, Joe Biden was profiting from questionable business deals that his son Hunter Biden made in Russia and Ukraine.

Putin disputed the allegations on the day in question and was quoted in Russian state-run media just before the purported phone call, saying he saw no evidence of criminality in the younger Biden’s business dealings in Ukraine and Russia.

It’s anyone’s guess what Trump was trying to do by calling Putin. The relationship between these two men has been difficult to assess from the get-go. Perhaps we’ll find out more as the Jan. 6 committee keeps digging. I hope so. The more the panel uncovers, the worse the situation grows for Trump.