Aerial view of the United States military headquarters, the Pentagon.
Jason Reed | Reuters
Text messages received and sent by top Pentagon officials who were part of the Trump administration on Jan. 6, 2021, were deleted from their government-issued phones, according to a federal court document that cites Defense Department statements and the Army.
The text messages from that day, when a mob of Trump supporters stormed the US Capitol, “were not preserved and therefore not searchable,” according to that document.
The document says Defense Department and Army officials have said, “That when an employee separates [Department of Defense] or the military, turn in the government-issued phone and the phone is wiped.”
The filing in U.S. District Court in Washington, DC, was a joint status report from attorneys involved in a lawsuit by the watchdog group American Oversight against the Department of Defense, the Army, the National Guard and the Department of Justice. That lawsuit seeks records related to Jan. 6 from a group of former Pentagon officials.
The status report was submitted in March.
But it came to light on Tuesday when American Oversight asked Attorney General Merrick Garland to open an investigation into the Pentagon’s “failure to preserve communications, which included those of former Acting Defense Secretary Chris Miller and former Secretary of the Army Ryan McCarthy, since Jan. 6.” the group said.
The group in its letter to Garland noted that the Department of Homeland Security’s inspector general is conducting a criminal investigation into the Jan. 6 deletion of text messages from the cell phones of Secret Service agents and officials.
“The apparent deletion of records beginning Jan. 6 by multiple agencies reinforces the need for an interagency investigation into the possible destruction of federal records,” America’s Oversight Executive Director, Heather, wrote to Garland Sawyer.
“Therefore, we urge you to exercise your authority to take over the investigation into the alleged deletion of records by DHS, as requested [Sen. Dick Durbin, D-Illinois]and also to investigate [Department of Defense] for the same conduct: deletion or destruction of records previously stored on the mobile devices of such officials, including text messages (or messages from similar applications such as Signal or WhatsApp) related to the business of the agency on January 6, 2021,” Sawyer. wrote.
Last week, the House Select Committee investigating the Capitol riots released Miller’s videotaped testimony, during which the former acting defense secretary contradicted claims by former President Donald Trump that he had asked that at least 10,000 National Guard troops be deployed to Washington by January. 6.
“I was never given any direction or order nor was I aware of any plan of this nature,” Miller said in his testimony. “There was no order from the president.”
A public House committee hearing on July 21 focused on the fact that for 187 minutes on January 6, 2021, Trump took no action to stop the attack on the Capitol by his supporters.
“Within 15 minutes of leaving his rally, Trump knew the Capitol was under attack. But what did he do? He went to his dining room, turned on the TV and watched the deadly insurrection he incited in real time for entertainment” , the representative Jimmy Gomez, D-Calif., tweeted during the hearing.