Fanosh Amiri
WASHINGTON (AP) — Despite requests from Congress and federal investigators to keep the information, the Secret Service confirmed Tuesday, July 19, in response to a House January subpoena that text messages from the Secret Service during the attack on the U.S. Capitol had been captured. delete. .6 Committee.
Florida Rep. Stephanie Murphy, a Democrat on the Jan. 6 panel and the first Vietnamese-American woman to be elected to Congress, said the Secret Service acknowledged the incident in a letter. removed, detailing how the agency phone was migrated to the new system a few weeks later. 2021 attack.
Murphy said the agency lets individual agents decide which electronic records to keep and which to delete in the process.
“No one along the way stopped and thought, ‘Well, maybe we shouldn’t migrate data and devices until we can meet these four requirements of Congress,'” Murphy said on MSNBC.
Removing the information raises the possibility of losing evidence that could shed more light on then-President Donald Trump’s conduct during the uprising, especially after testimony that he confronted security as he tried to join supporters in the Capitol.
Murphy said that while the agency has handed over a trove of records and documents, what the committee is still seeking are electronic communications between the agents the day before the attack and when the mob broke into the Capitol on Jan. 6.
“They also said they would continue to see if there were other ways to protect the desired and subpoenaed text messages that we requested,” Murphy said. “I certainly hope they find a way to find these texts and respond to the subpoena.”
The Secret Service’s response to the committee came the same day the National Archives asked the agency to investigate “potentially unauthorized deletions” of texts.
A letter from the Department of Homeland Security’s Office of the Inspector General last week, obtained by The Associated Press, told lawmakers that information from the Secret Service, which has been the target of intense scrutiny, was sent between Jan. 5 and Jan. 6, 2021, Wiped “as part of an equipment replacement program”.
The Secret Service said all procedures were followed and pledged to “fully cooperate” with the archives’ review.
“The U.S. Secret Service respects and supports the important role of the National Archives and Records Administration in ensuring the preservation of government records,” agency spokesman Anthony Guglielmi said.
The National Archives, which is responsible for government record keeping, asked the Secret Service to investigate the possible deletion of information and report it within 30 days.
“Through multiple news sources, the National Archives and Records Administration (NARA) has become aware of the potential for unauthorized deletion of Secret Service text messages,” said Laurence Brewer, chief U.S. records keeper. Brewer) in a letter to the Department of Homeland Security.
If it determines that any text messages have been deleted, the agency must detail which records were affected, a statement of the reasons for the deletion, plans to establish safeguards against future loss, and “for the salvage, retrieval, or reconstruction of records,” the letter reads. road.
The Secret Service responded, “The suggestion that the Secret Service maliciously deleted the text message after receiving the request is false.”
“In fact, the Secret Service cooperates fully with the Office of the Inspector General in every way — whether it’s interviews, documents, emails or text messages,” said Secret Service spokesman Guglielmi.
He said the Secret Service had begun resetting its mobile devices to factory settings in January 2021 “as part of a pre-planned three-month system migration.” During this process, some data is lost.
A nine-member House panel, formed on Jan. 6, recently revived interest in the Secret Service after former White House aide Cassidy Hutchinson gave dramatic testimony about Trump’s actions on the day of the riots .
