The transfer, if it takes place, follows several days of confusion and finger-pointing over the elusive messages, which a government watchdog told the committee were “deleted” by the Secret Service — only for the agency to vehemently deny the charge. The allegation led a House select committee to subpoena the Secret Service over the texts late Friday, hours after the committee met with Joseph Koufari, the inspector general of the Department of Homeland Security. Cuffari, a Trump appointee, had sent the committee a letter earlier this week saying the agency had deleted text messages from Jan. 5 and Jan. 6, 2021, “as part of a device replacement program.” The erasure came “after OIG [Office of Inspector General] requested records of electronic communications” from the agency, Cuffari wrote. Investigators on Jan. 6 accused Trump of instigating the attack on Capitol Hill in an attempt to cling to power after his election loss, and are eager to learn whether the “deleted” messages might reveal new details about Trump’s actions and intentions. around the rebellion. The focus on the Secret Service has taken on new urgency since last month, when a former top West Wing aide testified about a confrontation between Trump and his security detail on Jan. 6 after the president was told he would not be taken to Capitol Hill for join the protest there. The aide, Cassidy Hutchinson, provided this explosive account secondhand, and some of the agents involved have since disputed it, though not directly. Given the discrepancies, the select committee aims to cast a wide net when it comes to the Secret Service, which on Jan. 6 was protecting not only Trump but also his vice president, Mike Pence, who was a key target of the violent mob. who stormed the Capitol. Their subpoena gave the agency until Tuesday morning to turn over the disputed communications. “There was a statement made by the department representative saying that it wasn’t true, it wasn’t fair, and that they actually had texts about it,” Rep. Zoe Lofgren (D-Calif.) said on Sunday’s appearance on ABC’s “This Week.” , referring to the agency’s denial of Cuffari’s account. “And we say, ‘Fine, if you’ve got them, we need them.’ “ “And we expect to get them this Tuesday. So we’ll see,” added Lofgren, a member of the House committee on January 6. After Friday’s subpoena, Tuesday’s deadline is the fastest turnaround the committee has requested from one of its subpoena targets, a sign lawmakers are running out of patience to unravel the mystery surrounding the messages as the public hearing phase of the investigation winds down. . Anthony Guglielmi, a spokesman for the Secret Service, said the agency would meet Tuesday’s 10 a.m. deadline, but that much of what it must turn over will repeat what it has already shared with the committee. He denied there were any “secret messages” the agency was withholding or anything else officials “withhold” from the committee. “We will respond in detail to all five sections of the subpoena,” Guglielmi told The Hill Monday, reading a list of what has been provided to investigators. “We also provided almost 800,000 documents, emails, radio broadcasts, design files, business plans, Microsoft Teams chat messages — we provided all of those things. We will provide all that. We will respond to each response to the committee’s subpoena to the best of our ability.” The Secret Service last week said Cuffari’s allegations were categorically false and described the data loss as part of a “pre-planned, three-month system migration.” “In the process, data residing on some phones was lost,” the agency said at the time. Guglielmi said Secret Service agents were advised to upload data from their phones, but because the agency avoids text messages for security reasons, there was little to share. “It’s hard for people to understand, but we don’t communicate via text. It’s in policy that you don’t conduct business over text messages,” he said. “There is no reason to say that the texts were lost. I mean, how do you know these people texted? They were told to upload their official records, and they did. So that’s partly what we’re going to share with the committee, all the data that we have. People say the texts were lost. How do you know messages have been sent?’ During Friday’s closed-door meeting, Cuffari maintained that the messages were lost and expressed optimism that there might be some way to reconstruct them using various forensic tools, according to the Guardian. As lawmakers on the committee made the rounds Sunday, many pointed out that the Secret Service could be violating federal records laws if it was unable to preserve data, let alone at such a critical time. “This is what we have to get to the bottom of,” Rep. Elaine Luria (D-Va.) said on CNN’s “State of the Union.” “There is a requirement for federal agencies to maintain records,” he continued. “An agency that was such a key part of such a critical event in our history — one would assume that they did everything possible to preserve those records, to analyze them, to determine what kinds of things went right or went wrong that day.” day”. Lofgren said the committee just needed “all the texts from the 5th and 6th”. “I was shocked to hear that they didn’t back up their data before restoring their iPhones. This is crazy. I don’t know why that would be,” he said. LexisNexis under growing pressure to cut ties with Pentagon ICE joins Senate chip debate, citing national security “But we need to get that information to get the full picture.” Rep. Adam Kinzinger (R-Ill.), another committee member, also expressed disbelief that the Secret Service would have deleted any communications around Jan. 6, criticizing the agency for what he called “contradictory” explanations. “To say the least, it’s pretty crazy that the Secret Service would end up deleting anything related to one of the most infamous days in American history,” he told CBS News’ “Face the Nation.” “Especially when it comes to the role of the Secret Service.”
