WASHINGTON (Washington Insider Magazine) – The Secret Service was served with a subpoena by the House committee looking into the Capitol attack on Friday after a Homeland Security officer informed members of the committee about the Secret Service’s deletion of text messages from January 5 and 6, 2021.
Committee head Bennie Thompson, a Democrat from Mississippi, stated the group was interested in any relevant text conversations and other information connected to January 6 in a letter to Secret Service Director James Murray. He said that the request came about as a result of claims that the Secret Service had deleted text conversations after the internal watchdog sought records of digital communications relating to the incident on January 6 and informed congressional committees of the allegations.
According to a person familiar with the situation who spoke to NBC News, Thompson’s letter was sent during a Friday briefing for all nine committee members by Homeland Security Inspector General Joseph Cuffari.
Cuffari stated in a letter to 2 congressional committees two days prior that he had been notified that the Secret Service had an part of a device-replacement programme that destroyed many of the texts from January 6 and the day prior to the assault.” He sent the committee a copy of the letter he submitted to the Governmental Affairs Committee, the House Homeland Security Committee, and the Senate Homeland Security Committee.
In a statement released on Thursday, Secret Service spokesperson Anthony Guglielmi emphasized that the organization had given the inspector general’s investigation its full cooperation and that some text messages had been deleted before being asked. Guglielmi said that none of the messages it was looking for had been lost in the transfer and that the inspector general’s office had been informed of the data loss on certain phones.
In his letter to Murray on Friday, Thompson requested the documents in response to Guglielmi’s refutation.
The January 6 committee as well as a federal agency have engaged in a rare public dispute as the panel gets ready for a session Thursday night that is likely to provide fresh information about circumstances surrounding the uprising.
The agency has been requested to deliver the pertinent data by Tuesday by the panel.
