Secret Service text messages around Jan. 6 were erased, inspector general says
The disclosure drew concern from the House committee, which has heard testimony that President Donald Trump wanted agents to take him to the Capitol that day.
WASHINGTON — Text messages sent and received by Secret Service agents around the time of the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the Capitol last year have been erased, an inspector general said Thursday, prompting concern from the House committee investigating the assault.
In a letter obtained by The New York Times, the inspector general for the Department of Homeland Security, the parent agency of the Secret Service, reported that many of the agents’ texts were erased as part of a device replacement program even after the inspector general had requested them as part of his inquiry into the events of Jan. 6.
The letter was reported earlier by The Intercept.
Jan. 6 hearings
Rep. Bennie Thompson, D-Miss., chair of both the Jan. 6 committee and the House Homeland Security Committee, said he received a letter Thursday from the inspector general informing him of the erased text messages.
“It’s concerning,” Thompson said in an interview. “It’s important for us to get as much information about how this discrepancy occurred.”
In a statement, the Secret Service disputed parts of the inspector general’s findings, saying that it “lost” data on “some phones” as part of a preplanned three-month “system migration” in January 2021, but maintaining that no texts pertinent to the inquiry “had been lost in the migration.”
The agency said that the project was underway before it received notice from the inspector general to preserve its data, and that it did not “maliciously” delete text messages.
The news comes as the Jan. 6 committee is investigating an incident involving former President Donald Trump and the Secret Service that occurred in his armored Suburban SUV soon after his speech on the Ellipse ended Jan. 6.
Cassidy Hutchinson, a former White House aide, testified before the panel that a top White House official told her that Trump had become enraged when his security detail refused to take him to the Capitol.
Hutchinson said she had been told by Anthony Ornato, a deputy White House chief of staff, that Trump tried to grab the steering wheel of his vehicle when he was told he could not go to the Capitol to join his supporters, some of whom he had been told were armed. Hutchinson also said Ornato told her that Trump “lunged” at his lead Secret Service agent, Robert Engel.
Secret Service officials, speaking on the condition of anonymity, disputed some details in her account. But the officials did say Engel, Ornato and the driver of the Suburban were prepared to testify again before the committee and confirm another element of Hutchinson’s testimony: that Trump demanded his agents take him to the Capitol, even after they emphasized that it was too dangerous for him to go.
Engel and Ornato had already spoken to the committee’s investigators before Hutchinson’s testimony. Thompson said Thursday that neither man had yet come in for another interview, but he said the panel was in discussions with them.
The committee also interviewed an officer with Washington’s Metropolitan Police Department who was part of the presidential motorcade that day and told the panel that Trump’s departure from the Ellipse was delayed because of his anger over not being allowed to go to the Capitol, according to two people familiar with the officer’s testimony.
The officer was not in the SUV with Trump but heard communications concerning the altercation and corroborated that the incident occurred, the people said. The officer’s testimony was reported earlier by CNN.
The disclosure about the text messages came from Joseph Cuffari, the Homeland Security Department’s inspector general. He wrote to the House and Senate committees with jurisdiction over the department Wednesday, saying many Secret Service text messages from Jan. 5 and Jan. 6, 2021, “were erased as part of a device replacement program.”
Cuffari wrote that the texts were erased after the inspector general’s office started an investigation into Jan. 6 and requested electronic communications from the agency. He also reported that Secret Service personnel were declining to provide records to his office without first having department lawyers review them, a process that he said was causing “weekslong delays” and “confusion.”
This article originally appeared in The New York Times.
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