WASHINGTON (Washington Insider Magazine) – Prior to their devices being essentially “restored to factory settings” and their texts being lost as part of an agency-wide reboot and replacement programme, employees of the Secret Service, according to a high ranking Secret Service official, received 2 emails reminding them to save the data on their mobile phones, including text messages.
The senior official stated that on February 4, 2021, employees were sent a third email asking them to keep any communication linked to January 6. At that time, multiple Congressional panels had requested records from the Secret Service from the day of the Capitol insurrection.
The subpoena for text messages sent by the Secret Service on January 5 and January 6, 2021, was issued last week by the special House committee probing the Capitol violence of January 6, 2021. The Secret Service does not have any new text messages to turn over, according to a source familiar with the situation who spoke to NBC News on Tuesday.
The Secret Service’s Office of Strategic Planning sent the first email on record preservation on December 9, 2020, and the Chief Information Officer of the organization sent the second email about record preservation in January 2021, however the source did not give a specific date. According to the senior Secret Service officer, both emails offered directions on how to preserve records and warnings that government personnel have a duty to do so.
The Secret Service representative and another senior officer inside DHS both said that the initial two emails did not explicitly mention January 6 in any way.
By the time the Inspector General requested the documents more than a month after the assault on the Capitol, according to the Secret Service source, that information had already been lost.
It’s unclear exactly when phone records went missing. The National Archives is investigating the timeline.
DHS Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas assured attendees at the Aspen Security Conference on Tuesday night that the Secret Service will fully assist with any probes into the disappearance of the text messages from the Jan. 6 panel and others.
