Saul Loeb AFP | Getty Images The U.S. Secret Service turned over only one text message thread in response to a subpoena issued by the House Select Committee to investigate the riot on Capitol Hill on Jan. 6, 2021, according to a letter obtained by NBC News on Wednesday. That development was revealed by the Secret Service in a letter sent on Tuesday, the deadline for the agency to turn over a trove of documents related to the uprising, when a violent mob of supporters of then-President Donald Trump stormed the Capitol. The Secret Service and the select committee did not immediately respond to CNBC’s requests for comment. The select committee issued the subpoena after being told that Secret Service texts from January 5 and January 6 of that year had been deleted as a result of a “device replacement program.” The inspector general for the Department of Homeland Security, which oversees the Secret Service, informed the select committee of the missing texts hours before the subpoena was issued Friday night, news outlets reported.
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The inspector general, Joseph Koufari, previously told congressional committees that the messages were deleted after his office requested from the Secret Service electronic communications records related to the Capitol uprising. Secret Service spokesman Anthony Guglielmi rejected any suggestion that the agency “deleted malicious text messages upon request,” saying last week that “the Secret Service is cooperating fully with the OIG in every respect.” Guglielmi said the Secret Service had begun restoring its devices in January 2021 as part of a pre-planned “system migration process,” during which some data was lost. The letter sent Tuesday, obtained by NBC, said the Homeland Security inspector general “requested specific text messages sent or received by 24 Secret Service personnel between December 7, 2020 and January 8 2021”. After receiving that request, the letter said the Secret Service located “a text message conversation between former US Capitol Police Chief Steven Sud with former Secret Service Uniform Division Chief Thomas Sullivan requesting assistance on January 6, 2021 and advised that the agency did not have any further registration to respond to [the inspector general’s] text message request.” Rep. Zoe Lofgren, D-Calif., one of nine members of the select committee, said in an interview with MSNBC on Tuesday that the committee “received a text message” from the Secret Service. That message may not be new, Lofgren said: “It’s clear to me, this is a text message that may have been intercepted through another branch of government.” The Secret Service said it turned over a total of 10,569 pages of documents by Tuesday’s deadline, NBC reported. “The Secret Service continues to make extensive efforts to further evaluate whether any relevant text messages were sent or received by 24 individuals identified by [Cuffari’s office] were lost due to the Intune migration and, if so, whether such texts are recoverable,” the letter added. Meanwhile, the National Archives and Records Administration on Tuesday asked the Secret Service to investigate the “possible unauthorized deletion” of the texts in question. The texting controversy comes amid heightened public interest in the Secret Service after the select committee’s public hearings on the Capitol Hill riot, which produced bombshell allegations that Secret Service agents were involved in that day’s events. Former White House aide Cassidy Hutchinson told the committee last month that she heard Trump, after a pre-event rally near the White House, bumped into a Secret Service agent in a vehicle after being told he would not be driven to the Capitol . Trump denied the allegation, and news outlets reported that unnamed Secret Service sources disputed her comments. But agents familiar with the alleged incident have yet to dispute Hutchinson’s claims in the affidavit before the committee. The commission’s next public hearing is set for 8 p.m. ET Thursday.
