Secret Service Erased Jan. 6 Texts After Being Asked for Them

Thursday reporting by The Intercept that the Secret Service deleted text messages from January 5 and 6, 2021 “shortly after oversight officials requested the agency’s electronic communications” has elicited many questions and concerns about what evidence regarding last year’s deadly assault on the U.S. Capitol was destroyed.

The Secret Service claims that the messages were erased as “part of a device-replacement program.”

But the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) Office of Inspector General (OIG) wrote in a Wednesday letter to the leaders of the House and Senate homeland security committees that the Secret Service deleted the messages “after OIG requested records of electronic communications” from the agency as part of its evaluation of the January 6 riot instigated by former President Donald Trump.

Moreover, “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,” the letter states. “This review led to weeks-long delays in OIG obtaining records and created confusion over whether all records had been produced.”

The OIG’s letter, which does not specify whether all of the messages were erased or just some, was eventually given to the House committee investigating the build-up to January 6 and the violence that took place on that day.

Rep. Bennie Thompson (D-Miss.), who chairs both the House Committee on Homeland Security and the chamber’s January 6 panel, told Axios on Thursday that “it’s concerning, obviously.”

“If there’s a way we can reconstruct the texts or what have you, we will,” he added. The panel’s hearing next Thursday is expected to focus on the right-wing mob’s attack on the Capitol.

The Secret Service “has emerged as a key player” in the momentous congressional hearings on the Trump-led effort to prevent the certification of then-President-elect Joe Biden’s victory, The Intercept reported. “That day, then-Vice President Mike Pence was at the Capitol to certify the results. When rioters entered the building, the Secret Service tried to whisk Pence away from the scene.”

“Had Pence entered the vice presidential limo,” The Intercept noted, “he would have been taken to a secure location where he would have been unable to certify the presidential election results, plunging the U.S. into uncharted waters.”

Originally published at Commondreams.org.