The Secret Service deleted texts from January 5 and 6 2021. Here’s what we know.
The National Archives and Records Administration requested on July 19 that the Secret Service investigate the erasure of some of its records from the day of the Capitol riot. This came as the agency notified the House committee investigating the attack that it hadn’t found any new messages relating to events that day.
“We received a letter today that did provide us with a lot of documents and some data. However, we did not receive the additional text messages that we were looking for,” Rep. Stephanie Murphy, a member of the committee, told MSNBC.
There’s been heightened interest in the actions of Secret Service personnel on the day of the Capitol Riot ever since the explosive testimony provided to the Jan. 6 panel by Cassidy Hutchinson, an aide to former Trump White House chief of staff Mark Meadows. Hutchinson maintained that when Trump was told he couldn’t return to the Capitol after his rally that day, he attempted to take control of the vehicle he was in with Secret Service agent Robert Engel, who he “lunged” at with his other hand.
According to CNN, the Secret Service has provided just one text exchange to the DHS inspector general, who in June 2021 asked for all records of all messages sent from December 7, 2020 to January 8, 2021 between 24 personnel.
Last week, it was reported by The Intercept that the Secret Service deleted texts from January 5 and 6 2021 after the Department of Homeland Security’s internal watchdog requested them.
The revelation was made in a letter on July 13 from Inspector General Joseph Cuffari to congressional committees, in which Cuffari explained that many of the messages from those dates had been “erased as part of a device replacement program.”
“The (DHS) notified us that many U.S. Secret Service… text messages from January 5 and 6 2021 were erased as part of a device replacement program,” Cuffari wrote. “The USSS erased those messages after (the inspector general) requested records of electronic communications from USSS, as part of our evaluation of events at the Capitol on January 6.”
According to NBC, Cuffri added that DHS personnel had informed inspectors repeatedly that “they were not permitted to provide records directly” to the watchdog, and that agency attorneys must review the records first.
“This review led to weeks-long delays in OIG obtaining records and created confusion over whether all records had been produced,” he said.
Secret Service spokesman Anthony Guglielmi has reportedly described Cuffri’s claims as “categorically false,” adding that the agency has cooperated fully with the inspector general. According to Guglielmi, the text messages were lost before they were requested as part of a “pre-planned” system migration in January 2021 that involved returning mobile phones to factory settings.
“The insinuation that the Secret Service maliciously deleted text messages following a request is false,” Guglielmi said per NBC. “In fact, the Secret Service has been fully cooperating with the OIG in every respect — whether it be interviews, documents, emails, or texts.”
