US Secret Service deleted messages from the attack on Capitol Hill, according to the Government

First modification: 07/15/2022 – 05:06

Department of Homeland Security Inspector General Joseph Cuffari told Congress in the letter dated Wednesday that his office has had difficulty obtaining Secret Service records from Jan. 5 and 6, 2021.

The messages could be crucial to House and Justice Department investigations into whether Donald Trump and his close aides encouraged the deadly insurrection by the former president’s supporters on Capitol Hill.

The attack was intended to prevent the certification of his Democratic rival Joe Biden as the winner of the November 2020 elections.

Secret Service agents were with Trump that day, as were Vice President Mike Pence, who went into hiding on Capitol Hill after pro-Trump rioters called for him to be hanged.

On June 29, a former White House staffer told the January 6 House investigation that Trump had tried to force the Secret Service to take him to Capitol Hill to join his supporters.

“The Department notified us that many United States Secret Service (USSS) text messages, dated January 5 and 6, 2021, were deleted as part of a device replacement program,” Cuffari wrote in the first-reported letter. once by The Intercept and later published by Politico.

“The USSS deleted those text messages after the OIG (Office of Inspector General) requested records of electronic communications” for review on Jan. 6, he said.

In addition, the department has been slow in providing other records to the OIG, he added.

In a statement, Secret Service spokesman Anthony Guglielmi denied the allegation.

He said the officers’ phones were being wiped as part of a planned replacement program that began before the OIG requested the information six weeks after the insurrection.

“The Secret Service reported … the loss of data from certain phones, but confirmed to the OIG that none of the texts they were looking for had been lost in the migration,” he said.