The Homeland Security Office of the Inspector General (OIG), in a letter obtained by The Associated Press, said the messages from Jan. 5 to Jan. 6, 2021, were deleted “as part of a device replacement program.” The deletion came after the watchdog office requested records of electronic communications between the agents as part of its investigation into events surrounding the Jan. 6 attack, the letter said. In addition, Homeland Security personnel were told they could not provide records to the inspector general and any such records would first have to be reviewed by DHS attorneys. “This review led to weeks of delays in obtaining OIG records and created confusion about whether all records had been created,” said the letter, which was dated Wednesday and sent to the leaders of the House and Senate homeland security committees. WATCH l Former White House aide testifies about Trump-Secret Service incident described to her:
Trump ran into a Secret Service agent: a former White House aide
Former White House aide Cassidy Hutchinson tells a Jan. 6 panel that Donald Trump lunged at a Secret Service agent to try to force him to drive to Capitol Hill. The deletion of the messages is sure to raise questions for the House panel investigating the Jan. 6 attack, which has renewed interest in the Secret Service after former White House aide Cassidy Hutchinson’s dramatic testimony late last month about former President Donald Trump’s attack. actions on the day of the uprising. Hutchinson recalled being told of a confrontation between Trump and his Secret Service as he angrily demanded to be taken to the Capitol, where his supporters would later breach the building. He also recalled hearing Trump tell security officials to remove the magnetometers for his rally at the Ellipse, a park just south of the White House, even though some of his supporters were armed.
The Secret Service disputes the characterization
Secret Service spokesman Anthony Guglielmi disputed the letter Thursday night, saying, “The suggestion that the Secret Service deleted malicious text messages upon request is false. In fact, the Secret Service is fully cooperating with the OIG in every way — either these are interviews, documents, emails or texts’. He said the Secret Service had begun resetting its mobile devices to factory settings in January 2021 “as part of a pre-planned, three-month system migration.” In this process, some data was lost. WATCH l Watch a recap of the most recent Jan. 6 televised committee hearing:
Day 7 of US Capitol attack hearings focus on extremist groups, Trump connection
During Day 7 of the committee hearings investigating the January 6, 2021 attack on the US Capitol, the committee presented witnesses linking former President Donald Trump to the masterminds of the attack. It was unclear why a data migration would take place just as a presidential administration was giving way to a new one, or if this was a common practice in the past. The inspector general first requested the electronic communications on Feb. 26, “after the migration had begun,” Guglielmi said. “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,” he said. The claim that officials in the inspector general’s office did not have timely access to the material because of a review by Homeland Security lawyers has been made by the inspector general in the past and is also not true, he said. “DHS has repeatedly and publicly refuted this allegation, including in response to the OIG’s last two semiannual reports to Congress,” Guglielmi added. Reaction from the Democratic congressman from Tennessee: This is wrong wrong, wrong behavior. Trump making a Secret Service agent his deputy chief of staff was also wrong. We need to get the Secret Service to follow the law and be a public service as well as the Secret Service https://t.co/P86qGZBh9Y —@RepCohen The agency said it provided a significant number of emails and chat messages containing conversations and details about Jan. 6 to the inspector general, and said text messages from Capitol Police asking for help on Jan. 6 were preserved and provided to the inspector general’s office. The deletion of the text messages was first reported by The Intercept.
