“The Select Committee was informed that USSS deleted text messages from 5 and 6 January 2021 as part of a ‘device replacement programme’. In a statement issued on July 14, 2022, USSS said it “has begun resetting its mobile phones to factory settings as part of a pre-planned, three-month system migration. In this process, data residing on some phones was lost. ‘ However, according to that USSS statement, ‘none of the texts says so [DHS Office of Inspector General] he was looking for had been lost in the migration,” Thompson wrote. “Accordingly, the Select Committee is seeking the relevant written messages, as well as any subsequent reports issued to any and all departments of the USSS that concern or relate in any way to the events of January 6, 2021,” he continued. The Secret Service said Saturday morning that it would respond to the select committee’s subpoena “quickly.” The Jan. 6 panel had planned to reach out to Secret Service officials to ask about the deletion of text messages from the day of the attack on the U.S. Capitol and the day before, including the agency’s records purge process to see if it was followed this policy. Thompson previously told CNN. Earlier Friday, Department of Homeland Security Inspector General Joseph Koufari told the committee in a briefing that the Secret Service did not conduct its own ex post review of the Jan. 6 incident and chose to rely on the inspector general’s investigation, according to a source aware of the update. The Secret Service, Cuffari told the panel, was not fully cooperative with his investigation. Thompson confirmed the inspector general’s remarks about a lack of cooperation, telling CNN, “Well, they didn’t fully cooperate” and that the commission “had limited involvement with the Secret Service.” “We will continue with some additional engagement now that we have met with the IG,” he said, adding that the committee will work “to try to ascertain whether these texts can be resurrected.” Secret Service spokesman Anthony Guglielmi said in a statement Saturday that the agency has provided “full and unwavering cooperation” with the House committee’s work investigating the Jan. 6 uprising “and that is not changing.” The agency has made special agents available for deposition and turned over nearly 800,000 emails, radio broadcasts and operational and planning records, according to Guglielmi. The Secret Service deleted text messages from Jan. 5 and 6, 2021, shortly after they were requested by oversight officials investigating the agency’s response to the U.S. Capitol riot, according to a letter provided to the House select committee investigating the riot. The letter, which was originally sent to the House and Senate Homeland Security Committees by the Department of Homeland Security’s Inspector General for Homeland Security, said the messages were deleted from the system as part of a device replacement program after the watchdog requested the agency’s records about with his electronic communications. “First, the Department informed us that several US Secret Service text messages from January 5 and 6, 2021, were deleted as part of a device replacement program. The USSS deleted these text messages after the OIG requested electronic communications records from the USSS, as part of the assessment of events at the Capitol on January 6,” Cuffari said in the letter. “Second, DHS staff have repeatedly told OIG inspectors that they were not allowed to provide records directly to OIG and that such records first had to be reviewed by DHS attorneys,” Cuffari added. “This review led to weeks of delays in obtaining OIG records and created confusion about whether all the records had been created.” A DHS official provided CNN with a timeline of when the IG was notified by the Secret Service about the missing information caused by the data transfer. In a statement late Thursday, the Secret Service said the IG first requested information on Feb. 26, 2021, but did not specify when the agency identified the problem. According to the DHS official, the Secret Service notified the IG about the immigration issue on multiple occasions, beginning on May 4, 2021, then again on December 14, 2021, and in February 2022. In a statement Thursday night, the Secret Service said the inspector general’s claim about the lack of cooperation is “neither correct nor novel.” “In contrast, the DHS OIG has previously alleged that its employees were not granted appropriate and timely access to material due to an attorney’s review. 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,” the statement said. Members of the Jan. 6 panel expressed concern after meeting with Cuffari about the differing version of events between the inspector general and the Secret Service, and stressed that they wanted to hear from the service itself. “Now that we have the IG’s view of what happened. Now we have to talk to the Secret Service. And we expect to be in touch with them immediately,” Thompson said at the time. “One of the things we have to make sure is that what the Secret Service is saying and what the IG is saying, that these two issues are actually one and the same. And so now that we have that, we’re going to ask for physical information. And we will make a decision ourselves.” This story has been updated with additional details on Saturday. CNN’s Jamie Gangel, Whitney Wild, Priscilla Alvarez and Katelyn Polantz contributed to this report.
