(Washington Insider Magazine)-More confusion continues to surround the burning question of the January 6th texts, as the Inspector General informed the House committee that he witnessed the Secret Service delete the text messages from January 5th and 6th in 2021.
While the Secret Service plans to do a forensic examination of the phones to attempt to recover the January 6th texts, the inspector general doesn’t think it will produce any records or emails pertaining to the events on January 6th.
The Washington Post reported that even after the subpoena for the text messages, they didn’t receive any of the text messages they were looking for, according to Stephanie Murphy (D-FL), who is also a panel member.
They reported that the Secret Service turned over just a single text message, claiming that the message was the only one responsive to the subpoena and that other messages they were looking for could be unable to recover.
Zoe Lofgren (D-CA) spoke with MSNBC and said that it’s clear that the one text message they received may have been captured through a separate branch of government. The letter Lofgren obtained was related to the request of the U.S. Capitol Police Chief who requested assistance on January 6th.
In addition to these events, members of the National Archives requested that the Secret Service investigate whether or not the deletion of the text messages was authorized on their part.
This all comes after the Secret Service insists that they continue to give the January 6th probe its full cooperation in the matter. Anthony Guglielmi is a spokesperson for the Secret Service and denies that they had any malicious intent by deleting the text messages.
He also claims they have been cooperative throughout the process and that the Committee has their full and unwavering support with the probe into the events on January 6th.
Guglielmi acknowledges that there are missing text messages but claims that this was due to a pre-planned IT system migration that caused text messages to go missing.
While it appears that the Secret Service is complying with requests from the Committee and National Archives, there will be an even more extensive investigation into the Secret Service’s regulations and rules concerning recordkeeping and whether someone inside the agency violated these rules relating to the January 6th events.
