The U.S. Secret Service says it is unable to retrieve text messages deleted after the Dept. of Homeland Security Inspector General’s Office, and later Congress, requested the data, despite federal law requiring its retention.
Secret Service “has determined it has no new texts to provide Congress relevant to its Jan. 6 investigation, and that any other texts its agents exchanged around the time of the 2021 attack on the Capitol were purged, according to a senior official briefed on the matter,” The Washington Post reports.
Citing two people familiar with the matter the Post adds that the missing texts are “unlikely to ever be recovered.”
READ MORE: Watchdog to DOJ: Secret Service ‘Likely’ Broke Federal Criminal Law by Deleting Text Messages
Washington Post reporter Carol Leonnig tweeted, “PURGED — Here’s the news. Those @SecretService texts are gone, gone, gone . Agency scoured records and said it found nothing new to give Congress . National Archives now investigating if USSS broke the law.”
The Post’s report adds that the “National Archives on Tuesday sought more information on ‘the potential unauthorized deletion’ of agency text messages. The U.S. government’s chief record-keeper asked the Secret Service to report back to the Archives within 30 days about the deletion of any records, including describing what was purged and the circumstances of how the documentation was lost.”
According to the agency, which has been accused of changing stories, texts sent on the day of the insurrection and the day prior, were deleted during a device exchange program after not being backed up. While the Inspector General stated “many” text messages were lost, there does not appear to be a complete accounting of how many, nor answers on why messages for just those two days were deleted.
“Secret Service agents, many of whom protect the president, vice president and other senior government leaders, were instructed to upload any old text messages involving government business to an internal agency drive before the reset,” last year, The Post reports, citing a senior official, “but many agents appear not to have done so.”
The result is that potentially valuable evidence — the real-time communications and reactions of agents who interacted directly with Trump or helped coordinate his plans before and during Jan. 6 — is unlikely to ever be recovered, two people familiar with the Secret Service communications system said. They requested anonymity to discuss sensitive matters without agency authorization.
The U.S. House Select Committee on the January 6 Attack issued a subpoena for the missing text messages after news reports revealed their deletion. The DHS Inspector General (OIG) in letters to House and Senate Homeland Security Committees stated not only had the texts been deleted, but Secret Service has repeatedly refused to provide him with requested records.
“DHS personnel have repeatedly told OIG inspectors that they were not permitted to provide records directly to OIG and that such records had to first undergo review by DHS attorneys,” DHS IG Joseph Cuffari wrote.
On Saturday The Guardian noted that “January 6 investigators believe that the texts from the day of the Capitol attack could shed light on how the Secret Service wanted to move Donald Trump and Mike Pence, while texts from the day before could provide greater clarity on how security plans developed, the sources said.”
Image: Official White House Photo by Amanda Lucidon via Flickr