Sign up now for FREE unlimited access to Reuters.com Register WASHINGTON, July 14 (Reuters) – The U.S. Secret Service has deleted text messages from Jan. 5, 2021, and Jan. 6, 2021, after they were requested by oversight officials investigating the agency’s response to the Jan. 6 attack on Capitol Hill. he claimed. The Secret Service disputed that charge Thursday, saying some phone data was lost during a routine device move, but that all requested messages had been saved. In a letter to the House and Senate Homeland Security Committees investigating the events of Jan. 6, the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) inspector general’s office said “numerous” messages had been deleted by the Secret Service with a device-program replacement after the guard asked for the records. Sign up now for FREE unlimited access to Reuters.com Register It was unclear from the letter which messages the inspector general’s office believed had been deleted or what evidence they may have contained. After the letter was released Thursday, Bennie Thompson, who chairs both the congressional committee investigating the Capitol Hill attack and the House Homeland Security Committee, told news website Axios that the alleged deletion was “troubling.” “If there’s a way we can reconstruct the texts or what you have, we will,” Thompson said. DHS did not respond to a request for comment late Thursday. In a lengthy statement issued in response to the allegations, a Secret Service spokesman said the agency had cooperated “fully” with the inspector general’s office. “DHS OIG requested electronic communications for the first time on February 26, 2021, after immigration was well under way,” said spokesman Anthony Guglielmi. “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.” Guglielmi said that despite the inspector general’s office’s claims, his employees had “appropriate and timely access” to the materials. The January 6, 2021 attack on the US Capitol followed weeks of false claims by Trump that he had won the 2020 election. On Tuesday, lawmakers on the House panel investigating the attack accused Trump of inciting the violence in a last-ditch bid to stay in office after losing the election. read more Sign up now for FREE unlimited access to Reuters.com Register Reporting by Kanishka Singh in Washington Editing by Rosalba O’Brien and Edwina Gibbs Our Standards: The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.
