The Secret Service has concluded it does not have any new text messages to turn over to the House Jan. 6 committee, according to a report.
The agency was subpoenaed by the panel for relevant text messages from agents from Jan. 5-6, 2021, and had been given until Tuesday to comply with the request, but officials concluded the agency no longer possessed the text messages, a source told the Washington Post.
NATIONAL ARCHIVES REQUESTS SECRET SERVICE INVESTIGATE ‘IMPROPERLY DELETED’ TEXT MESSAGES
On Tuesday, the National Archives and Records Administration requested the Secret Service investigate whether text messages from the period in question were “improperly deleted.” The National Archives gave the agency 30 days to report back its findings and discuss actions it undertook to “salvage, retrieve, or reconstruct the records.”
“The United States Secret Service respects and supports the important role of the National Archives and Records Administration in ensuring preservation of government records. They will have our full cooperation in this review,” Anthony Guglielmi, chief of communications for the Secret Service, tweeted.
The agency did not maliciously purge text message material but lost the material due to a “device-replacement program,” Guglielmi previously stressed. The replacement program began about a month before the Department of Homeland Security’s Office of Inspector General sought those records, according to Guglielmi. The OIG made shockwaves last week when it informed the Jan. 6 committee that Secret Service text messages from Jan. 5-6, 2021, had been erased.
“DHS OIG requested electronic communications for the first time on Feb. 26, 2021, after the migration was well underway. The Secret Service notified DHS OIG of the loss of certain phones’ data, but confirmed to OIG that none of the texts it was seeking had been lost in the migration,” Guglielmi told the Washington Examiner last Thursday.
Guglielmi contended that some data had been lost but suggested “none of the texts” the OIG was after had been missing, the Washington Post reported. This prompted the Jan. 6 committee to subpoena the Secret Service for text messages from during the period in question.
The Washington Examiner reached out to representatives for the Secret Service and Jan. 6 committee for comment.
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Secret Service text messages could shed light on what transpired behind the scenes on or before the day of the Capitol riot. Last month, former White House aide Cassidy Hutchinson testified at a public Jan. 6 committee hearing that former President Donald Trump attempted to commandeer a Secret Service vehicle and lunged at an agent. Those claims have been disputed by Trump and reportedly by her source, Robert Engel, the special agent in charge at the time.
The Jan. 6 committee is slated to hold another public hearing Thursday focusing on Trump’s actions while the Capitol riot unfolded.
