Comment A government watchdog has accused the U.S. Secret Service of deleting texts from Jan. 5 and 6, 2021, after his office requested them as part of an investigation into the attack on the U.S. Capitol, according to a letter sent to lawmakers this week. Joseph V. Cuffari, head of the Department of Homeland Security’s Office of Inspector General, wrote to the leaders of the House and Senate Homeland Security committees, saying the text messages disappeared and that efforts to investigate the January 6, 2021 attack were being hampered. . “The Department has informed us that several US Secret Service (USSS) text messages from January 5 and 6, 2021 were deleted as part of a device replacement program,” he wrote in a Wednesday letter obtained by the Washington Post. The letter was previously reported by the Intercept and CNN. Cuffari emphasized that the erasures came “after“ the Office of Inspector General requested copies of the text messages for its own investigation and indicated they were part of a pattern of DHS resisting its investigations. Staff members are required by law to hand over records so the vast national security agency can audit them, but he said they have “repeatedly” refused to provide them until a lawyer can review them. “This review led to weeks of delays in obtaining OIG records and created confusion about whether all records had been created,” he wrote, offering to brief the House and Senate committees on “access issues.” The Secret Service text messages could provide information about the agency’s actions on the day of the riot and possibly those of President Donald Trump. A former White House official last month told a House select committee investigating the Capitol attack that Trump knew his supporters were armed, wanted to lead the mob into Capitol Hill and physically assaulted the senior Secret Service agent who told him that he couldn’t. Secret Service spokesman Anthony Guglielmi said Thursday that the agency did not delete malicious text messages upon request. “In fact, the Secret Service is fully cooperating with the OIG in every way — whether it’s interviews, documents, emails or messages,” he said. “First, in January 2021, before any OIG inspection began in this matter, USSS began resetting its cell phones to factory settings as part of a pre-planned, three-month system migration. In the process, data residing on some phones was lost,” he said. “DHS OIG first requested electronic communications on February 26, 2021, after immigration had begun. The Secret Service notified the DHS OIG of the loss of some phone data, but confirmed to the OIG that none of the texts it sought were lost in migration.” “Second, the DHS OIG’s claim about DHS’s cooperation in its investigation is neither correct nor novel. Instead, DHS OIG has previously alleged that its employees were not granted appropriate and timely access to materials due to a bar review,” Guglielmi said. “DHS has repeatedly and publicly refuted this claim, including in response to the OIG’s last two semiannual reports to Congress. It is unclear why the OIG is raising this issue again.” Cuffari, who was nominated by Trump in 2019 and confirmed by the Senate, has faced significant criticism since taking office. His first checks fell to historic lows, he clashed with Immigration and Customs Enforcement over the accuracy of an inspection of a detention center and blocked investigations into the Secret Service’s handling of protests in Lafayette Square after the killing of George Floyd and the spread of of coronavirus in the organization’s ranks, documents show. The OIG’s office is under investigation by the Council of Inspectors General on Integrity and Effectiveness (CIGIE), an independent entity in the executive branch, for undisclosed allegations of misconduct, according to an internal email released to the office in January. The nonprofit Project On Government Oversight (POGO), an independent watchdog, called on President Biden to remove Cuffari. Cuffari’s office did not respond to requests for comment Thursday, and DHS had no immediate comment on his allegations. A person briefed on the Secret Service’s reaction to Cuffari’s letter said the agency rejects characterizations that they deleted or deleted records at the request of Cuffari’s office. Like others interviewed for this report, this person spoke on condition of anonymity to share confidential internal discussions. According to two people briefed on the documents request, the Secret Service began a long-planned replacement of personnel phones to improve inter-agency communication in January 2021. As recently as February 2021, Cuffari’s office asked the Secret Service to produce records focused on Jan. 6 and the days leading up to the attack on Capitol Hill, seeking internal agency communications, memos, emails and phone records such as written messages. With At the time of the request, the people said, one-third of Secret Service personnel had been given new cell phones. Most of the replacement program began with staff members in the Washington offices, and if they didn’t back up their old messages, the people said, information from Jan. 6 and earlier would be lost. This could be understood include the texts sent and received by former White House deputy chief of staff Tony Ornato and former head of Trump’s security detail Bobby Engel and other senior Secret Service leaders. This device replacement program and the resulting failure to back up texts does not seem to affect emails. The Secret Service has a policy that requires employees to back up and store government communications when they retire old electronic or telephone devices, but in practice, staff do not consistently back up messages from phones. A similar issue arose in 2018, when the Justice Department’s inspector general said he used “forensic tools” to recover missing text messages from two senior FBI officials who had investigated Hillary Clinton and Trump and exchanged notes critical of the president . The missing messages drew criticism after GOP leaders and the president questioned how the FBI failed to preserve them. The Secret Service had a history of important files disappearing under the cover of night, and agency personnel refusing to cooperate when investigators came to ask for information. When a congressional committee was investigating assassinations and assassination attempts, it sought boxes of files that reportedly showed the Secret Service received ample warnings and threats before President John F. Kennedy’s death that white supremacists and other organizations planned to kill him. Kennedy using high-powered rifles from tall buildings. The Secret Service told investigators that the records had been destroyed as part of a routine culling of old records — days after investigators had requested them. Sen. Gary Peters (D-Mich.), chairman of the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee, said lawmakers “need to figure out whether the Secret Service destroyed federal records or the Department of Homeland Security obstructed oversight.” “The DHS Inspector General needs these records to conduct his independent oversight, and the public deserves a full picture of what happened on January 6,” he said in a statement. “I will be learning more from the DHS Inspector General about these allegations.” Devlin Barrett in Machipongo, Va., contributed to this report.
