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A government control agency accused the U.S. Secret Service of deleting texts from January 5 and 6, 2021, after its office requested them as part of an investigation into the attack on the Capitol of the United States. United States, according to a letter sent to lawmakers this week.
Joseph V. Cuffari, head of the Office of the Inspector General of the Department of Homeland Security, wrote to leaders of the House and Senate National Security Committees stating that text messages have disappeared and that efforts to investigate the January 6, 2021 attack were being thwarted.
“The Department notified us that many text messages from the U.S. Secret Service (USSS) on January 5 and 6, 2021 were deleted as part of a device replacement program,” he wrote in a letter dated Wednesday and obtained by The Washington Post. The letter was previously reported by Intercept and CNN.
Cuffari stressed that the erasures came “later” the Inspector General’s Office requested copies of the text messages for its own investigation and noted that they were part of a pattern of DHS resistance to its inquiries. Staff members are required by law to turn over the records so they can audit the extensive national security agency, but said they have “repeatedly” refused to provide them until a lawyer reviews them.
“This review caused delays in obtaining IIG records for weeks and created confusion as to whether all records had occurred,” he wrote, and offered to report to House and Senate committees. on “access issues”.
Secret Service text messages could provide information about the agency’s actions on the day of the insurgency and possibly those of President Donald Trump. A former White House official told the House select committee last month investigating the assault on the Capitol that Trump knew his supporters were armed, wanted to lead the crowd to the Capitol, and physically assaulted the Secret Service agent. who told him he couldn’t.
Secret Service spokesman Anthony Guglielmi said Thursday that the agency did not maliciously remove text messages following a request.
“In fact, the Secret Service has fully cooperated with the OIG in all aspects, be it interviews, documents, emails or texts,” he said.
“First, in January 2021, before the OIG opened any inspections on this issue, the USSS began resetting its mobile phones to factory settings as part of a previously planned system migration of three months.In this process, resident data on some phones was lost, “he said. “DHS OIG first requested electronic communications on February 26, 2021, after the migration was underway. The Secret Service notified DHS OIG of the loss of data from certain phones, but confirmed to the I heard that none of the texts I was looking for had been lost during the migration “.
“Second, the DHS OIG’s allegation of DHS’s cooperation with its investigation is neither correct nor new. On the contrary, the DHS OIG has previously alleged that its employees were not granted adequate and timely access to materials due to the lawyer’s review, ”Guglielmi said. “DHS has publicly and repeatedly denied this allegation, even in response to the OIG’s last two half-yearly reports to Congress. It is unclear why the OIG is raising this issue again.”
Cuffari, appointed by Trump in 2019 and confirmed by the Senate, has faced significant criticism since he took office. His first-year audits fell to historic lows, he clashed with Immigration and Customs Enforcement over the veracity of a detention center inspection, and blocked investigations into the management of the Lafayette Square Secret Service protests. after the assassination of George Floyd and the spread of the coronavirus in the ranks of the agency, the documents show.
The OIG office is under investigation by the Council of Inspectors General of Integrity and Effectiveness (CIGIE), an entity independent of the executive branch, for undisclosed allegations of misconduct, according to an internal email distributed to the office in January.
The nonprofit project on government oversight (POGO), an independent oversight body, has called on President Biden to remove Cuffari.
Cuffari’s office did not respond to requests for comment Thursday and DHS made no immediate comment on its allegations.
One person informed of the Secret Service’s reaction to Cuffari’s letter said the agency rejects their characterizations that they deleted or deleted records after Cuffari’s office asked them to. Like other interviewees for this report, this person spoke on condition of anonymity to share confidential internal discussions.
According to two people informed about the request for documents, the Secret Service began a pre-planned and agency-wide replacement of staff phones to improve communication across the agency in January 2021.
It was not until February 2021 that the Cuffari office requested that the Secret Service produce records centered on January 6 and the days before the attack on the Capitol, seeking internal communications from the agency, memoranda, emails and phone records such as text messages.
Per At the time of the request, people said, up to a third of Secret Service staff had received new cell phones.
Most of the replacement program began with staff members in Washington offices, and if they didn’t back up their old text messages, people said, the Jan. 6 report and the days before would be perd. That could be imagined include texts sent and received by former White House Deputy Chief of Staff Tony Ornato and former Trump security leader Bobby Engel and other senior Secret Service leaders.
It seems that this device replacement program and the resulting failure to back up texts do not affect emails.
The Secret Service has a policy that requires employees to back up and store government communications when removing old electronic or telephone devices, but in practice, staff do not consistently back up phone texts.
A similar problem arose in 2018, when the Justice Department inspector general said he used “forensic tools” to retrieve missing text messages from two senior FBI officials who had investigated Hillary Clinton and Trump and exchanged critical notes with the president. Missing messages sparked criticism when GOP leaders and the president questioned how the FBI could not preserve them.
The Secret Service has had a history of important records that disappeared under the cover of the night and that agency staff members refused to cooperate when investigators called for information.
When a congressional committee investigated killings and assassination attempts, it searched for log boxes that reportedly showed that the Secret Service received extensive warnings and threats before the death of President John F. Kennedy that white supremacists and other organizations were planning to kill Kennedy using great powers. rifles of tall buildings. The Secret Service told investigators that the records had been destroyed as part of a normal removal of old files, days after investigators had requested them.
Senator Gary Peters (D-Mich.), Chairman of the Senate Committee on Homeland Security and Government Affairs, said lawmakers “must go to the bottom of whether the Secret Service destroyed federal records or the Department of Homeland Security National obstructed supervision. “
“The DHS inspector general needs these records to do his independent oversight and the public deserves a full picture of what happened on Jan. 6,” he said in a statement. “I will learn more from the DHS inspector general about these related allegations.”
Devlin Barrett in Machipongo, Virginia, contributed to this report.