WASHINGTON (AP) – The House committee investigating the attack on the U.S. Capitol on Friday night cited the Secret Service because text messaging agents had been deleted around Jan. 6, 2021, while the panel investigates Donald Trump’s actions at the time of the deadly siege.
Committee chair Bennie Thompson, D-Miss., Said in a statement that the committee understands the messages had been “deleted.” Thompson described an aggressive schedule for document production for Tuesday.
“The USSR deleted text messages from January 5 and 6, 2021, as part of a ‘device replacement program,'” Thompson said Friday afternoon. of relevant text, as well as post-action reports that have been issued to any and all divisions of the USSR related or related in any way to the events of January 6, 2021. “
The Secret Service did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
The citations come hours after the nine-member panel received a closed briefing from the Department of Homeland Security watchdog, which oversees the Secret Service. The watchdog informed lawmakers of its finding that the Secret Service deleted texts around Jan. 6, according to two people familiar with the matter.
For the Jan. 6 panel, the watchdog’s finding raised the startling prospect of the loss of evidence that could shed more light on Trump’s actions during the uprising, especially after a previous testimony about the confrontation between the president with security as he tried to join supporters at the Capitol.
It was a rare action for the panel to issue a subpoena to an executive branch department.
Although lawmakers were open about what they heard, the closed-door briefing with Inspector General Joseph Cuffari came two days after his office sent a letter to the leaders of the National Security Committees of the United States. House and Senate claiming Secret Service agents deleted messages. between 5 and 6 January 2021 “as part of a device replacement program”. The erasure came after the surveillance office requested records from officers as part of its investigation into the events related to the Jan. 6 attack, according to the letter.
The committee had originally searched for electronic records in mid-January and made an official request in March for all communications received or sent from DHS employees between January 5 and 7, 2021.
Thompson, the Democratic chairman of the House panel on Jan. 6, told the Associated Press on Friday that the committee is delving into whether records have been lost. “There have been some conflicting positions on the issue,” the Mississippi lawmaker said.
The private briefing was confirmed by two people familiar with the matter who spoke to The Associated Press on condition of anonymity to discuss it.
The Secret Service insists that appropriate procedures were followed. Agency spokesman Anthony Guglielmi said: “The insinuation that the Secret Service maliciously deleted text messages after a request is false. In fact, the Secret Service has fully cooperated with the OIG in all aspects, whether interviews, documents, emails or texts.
He said the Secret Service had begun resetting its mobile devices to factory settings in January 2021 “as part of a previously planned three-month system migration.” In this process, some data was lost.
The inspector general first requested electronic communications on Feb. 26, “after the migration was underway,” Guglielmi said.
The Secret Service said it has provided a substantial number of emails and chat messages that included conversations and details related to Jan. 6 to the inspector general. He also said text messages from Capitol police calling for help on Jan. 6 were retained and delivered to the inspector general’s office.
The Senate Committee on Homeland Security and Government Affairs, which has jurisdiction over the Department of Homeland Security and the Secret Service, is also awaiting an information session from the inspector general on the letter, according to a person familiar with the committee’s discussions who did not was authorized. to talk about it publicly.
The Jan. 6 committee has once again taken an interest in the Secret Service after the dramatic testimony of former White House aide Cassidy Hutchinson, who recalled what she heard about former President Donald Trump’s actions on the insurrection.
Hutchinson recalled that he was told of a confrontation between Trump and his Secret Service detail when he angrily demanded that he be taken to the Capitol, where his supporters would later break into the building. He also recalled hearing Trump asking security officials to remove the tape recorders for his demonstration in the Ellipse, even though some of his supporters were armed.
Some details of this account were quickly disputed by these agents. Robert Engel, the agent who drove the presidential SUV, and Trump security officer Tony Ornato are willing to testify under oath that no agent was assaulted and that Trump never threw himself behind the wheel, he said. in AP a person knowledgeable about the matter. The person did not speak about the matter publicly and spoke on condition of anonymity.
With evidence still emerging, the House committee on Jan. 6 scheduled Friday for its next hearing to take place Thursday at prime time. The 8 p.m. hearing, which is the eighth in a series that began in early June, will delve deeper into the more than three-hour stretch when Trump failed to act as a crowd of supporters stormed the Capitol.
It will be the first hearing at peak time since June 9, the first on the committee’s findings. It was seen by 20 million people.
___
Associated Press writer Gary Fields contributed.
___
For full coverage of the Jan. 6 hearings, go to