The inspector general wrote in a letter sent Wednesday evening that the Secret Service should stop investigating the matter because it could interfere with the inspector general’s own investigation into what happened to the text messages from the agency
The letter adds to the growing tension between the Secret Service and the DHS inspector general over potentially missing text messages, which is seeking the House select committee as part of its investigation into the actions and movements of the DHS. former President Donald Trump on January 6, 2021..
“To ensure the integrity of our investigation, the USSS must not engage in any other investigative activities regarding the collection and preservation of the evidence referenced above,” wrote DHS Deputy Inspector General Gladys Ayala, in a letter to Secret Service Director James Murray dated July 20. . “This includes immediately refraining from interviewing potential witnesses, collecting devices or taking any other action that interferes with an ongoing criminal investigation.”
The inspector general wrote that the Secret Service should explain what interviews had already been conducted related to the text messages, along with “the scope of the interrogation and what, if any, warnings were issued. give to the witnesses “. The inspector general told the Secret Service to respond on Monday.
The Secret Service, in a statement, acknowledged having received the letter from the inspector general. “We informed the select committee on January 6 of the inspector general’s request and will conduct a thorough legal review to ensure that we fully cooperate with all oversight efforts and that they do not conflict with each other,” he said. say the agency in the statement.
The new letter comes after the Secret Service could only provide a single text message to the inspector general, who had requested a month of records for 24 members of the Secret Service staff, according to a letter to the select committee.
CNN has contacted the Secret Service and the DHS inspector general for comment.
The directive could complicate the Secret Service’s response to a subpoena it received from the House select committee last week, as well as a request from the National Archives this week to the DHS registrar asking the agency to clarify if the text messages were deleted and explain why.
The chairman of the select committee, Democratic Rep. Bennie Thompson of Mississippi, wrote in a letter to the director of the Secret Service that the panel was looking for text messages from January 5-6, 2021.
In a joint statement Wednesday, Thompson and the committee’s vice president, Rep. Liz Cheney, said they “have concerns” about how the Secret Service’s cell phone data was deleted.
“The procedure for preserving content prior to this purge appears to have been contrary to federal record retention requirements and may represent a possible violation of the Federal Records Act,” they said.
The Secret Service told the committee this week that it was making “extensive efforts” to determine if any text messages had been lost and could be recovered. These steps included “extracting all available metadata to determine which texts, if any, had been sent or received on the devices of the identified persons,” the agency said in a letter, in addition to interview the 24 people “to determine if there were any messages.” they were stored in locations that had not yet been searched by the Secret Service. “
The agency said it was “currently unaware of any text messages issued by Secret Service employees” that were requested by the inspector general “that were not withheld.”
The group of 24 includes high-ranking officials, several of whom remained in a secure location known as the SCIF (Secure Compartmentalized Information Facility) during the day where cellphones are not allowed, according to a source knowledgeable about the matter. The source also said that about half of the people are being reviewed to determine whether text messages were sent and received and possibly deleted, and what that content may have been.
Investigators determined that at least three of the people had only personal text messages, which they did not consider a public record, while investigators believe others have no text messages at all, the source said. The agency has so far produced an exchange of relevant text, which it has provided to the inspector general and the committee. The Secret Service told the inspector general last year that other than the single text message, the agency had “no other records responsive” to the request.
The inspector general has alleged that the Secret Service deleted text messages from 5 and 6 January 2021, shortly after they were requested by supervisory officials investigating the Secret Service’s response to the ‘January 6 attack on the Capitol, according to a letter which the Inspector General sent to the select committee of the House.
The Secret Service has previously explained that it was up to employees to carry out the necessary maintenance of their telephone records. The letter said the service provided staff with a “step-by-step” guide to preserving cell phone content, including text messages, before the phone migration began on January 27, 2021. He went on to explain that “all Secret Service employees are responsible for properly preserving government records that may be created through text messages.”
This story was updated with additional news on Thursday.