“The Select Search Committee is seeking the relevant text messages, as well as any ex post reports issued to any and all departments of the USSS related or related in any way to the events of January 6, 2021,” the committee chairman , Mississippi. spokesman Bennie Thompson said in a written statement Inspector General Joseph Koufari met with a House panel on Friday after accusing the Secret Service of deleting “numerous” text messages. “We now have to talk to the Secret Service … Our expectation is to contact them,” Thompson told CNN.
Conflicting accounts about texts
Panel member Jamie Raskin told reporters Friday that the panel is determined to recover text messages from Jan. 5 and Jan. 6, 2021, that were allegedly deleted. The Department of Homeland Security’s (DHS) inspector general’s office sent a letter to lawmakers on Wednesday, saying “numerous” messages had been deleted by the Secret Service under a device replacement program after the watchdog requested the records. The Secret Service disputed that charge Thursday, saying some phone data was lost during a routine device move, but all requested messages were saved. “A ‘routine’ file cleanup will require a process, so we want to see what that process is,” Thompson said Friday. It was unclear from the letter which messages the inspector general’s office believed had been deleted or what evidence they may have contained. The 2021 attack on the US Capitol by supporters of Donald Trump followed weeks of false claims by the former president that he had won the 2020 election.
Dramatic testimony of a former assistant
The Jan. 6 panel has renewed interest in the Secret Service after dramatic testimony from former White House aide Cassidy Hutchinson, who recalled what she heard about Trump’s actions on the day of the riot. 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 Ellipse Park rally, even though some of his supporters were armed. After, U.S. President Donald Trump speaks during a rally to challenge the certification of the results of the 2020 presidential election by the U.S. Congress, in Washington on January 6, 2021. (Jim Borghi/Reuters) With evidence still emerging, the Jan. 6 House committee has scheduled its next hearing for Thursday at 1 p.m. The hearing at 8 p.m. ET, the eighth in a series that began in early June, will delve deeper into the three-plus hours that Trump failed to act as a mob of supporters stormed the Capitol. It will be the first prime-time hearing since June 9, the first on the commission’s findings. This previous hearing was watched by 20 million people.
