Members of the US Secret Service will speak on their mobile phones as Donald Trump, the US presidential election, attends a meeting at the US Capitol in Washington, DC on November 10, 2016.
Sole Robe | AFP | Getty Images
The House Election Commission, which investigated on January 6, 2021, said the U.S. Secret Service may have violated federal record-keeping laws allegedly deleting agent text during the mobile device update process. Stated.
Democratic Chairman Bennie Thompson and Republican Vice-Chairman Liz Cheney said, “There are concerns that the system migration has erased mobile phone data for secret services.” Joint statement.
“The procedure for storing content prior to this purge appears to violate federal record keeping requirements and may indicate a possible violation of federal record law,” said the Commission leader.
The Secret Service did not immediately respond to CNBC’s request for comment on the statements from Thompson and Chainy.
The committee leader claims that the Secret Service, Summon Published by the selection committee.
The Secret Service has revealed details of the letter sent on Tuesday. The deadline for the summoned institution to hand over a pile of documents related to the January 6 riots. Donald TrumpSupporters attacked the Capitol.
The Secret Service has produced thousands of pages of other documents on the selected committee, “and our investigators are evaluating that information,” Thompson and Chaney said.
Read more about the aftermath of January 6th
However, they said the agency transitioned to the system just three weeks after the attack on the Capitol, which was a step from the hunting of violent mobs for him while the Vice President of the United States was under the protection of secret services. He said he had gone through the process. “”
“The four House Commissions had already sought these important records from the Department of Homeland Security before the records were clearly lost,” Thompson and Chainy added. “The Special Committee is also seeking additional confidential service records. Every effort must be made to retrieve lost data as well.”
The selection committee issued a subpoena after being notified that the secret service texts on January 5th and 6th of the year had been erased as a result of the “Device Exchange Program”. A Homeland Security Inspector General, who oversees the Secret Service, explained the missing text to the selection panel hours before the subpoena was issued on Friday night. The press reported..
Inspector General Joseph Caffari previously Told the parliamentary commission The message was deleted after his office asked the Secret Service for electronic communications records related to the Capitol riots.
“The Secret Service is fully cooperating with OIG in all respects,” Secret Service spokesman Anthony Guglielmi said last week. Authorities “maliciously deleted text messages on request.” I rejected the proposal. According to Guglielmi, the Secret Service began resetting devices in January 2021 as part of a pre-planned “system migration process.” In the meantime, some data was lost.
Senior staff of secret service Told NBC Employees of the agency were notified by two separate emails to keep a record of their mobile device before the exchange process began.
The letter received and reported by the NBC on Tuesday was sent and received by a Homeland Security Inspector General “between December 7, 2020 and January 8, 2021 by 24 Secret Service personnel. I specifically requested a text message. “
Following that request, the letter identified a text message conversation from the Secret Service’s former US Capitol Police Chief Steven Sund to Thomas Sullivan, the former Secret Service Uniform Manager, who requested assistance on January 6, 2021. Authorities respond to other records [the inspector general’s] Text message request. “
Other outlets sent by the agent at that time are unlikely to be recoverable, multiple outlets report.
In an MSNBC interview Tuesday, Rep. Zoelovgren, one of the nine members of the Election Commission, said the panel “received one text message” from the Secret Service. The message may not be new, Lofgren said: “It’s obvious to me, it’s a text message that may have been captured through another department of government.”
A secret service letter to the Commission on Tuesday said it had turned over a total of 10,569 pages of documents so far, according to the subpoena.
“The Secret Service has related text messages sent and received by 24 individuals. [Cuffari’s office] Lost by the Intune migration, and if so, is such text recoverable? “The letter added.
Meanwhile, the National Archives and Records Administration on Tuesday Asked the Secret Service to investigate “Potential unauthorized removal” of the text in question.
The controversy over text messages has led to a growing public interest in secret services following a hearing by the selection committee on the parliamentary riots that produced the bomb allegations that secret service agents were involved in the events of the day. It happens while you are.
Former White House Assistant Cassidy Hutchinson told the committee Last month she heard that after a riot rally near the White House, Trump rushed into the Secret Service agent in the car after being told by the Capitol not to drive him.
Trump denied the claim, and media reported that unnamed secret service sources disputed her statement. However, agents who are aware of the alleged case have not yet challenged Hutchinson’s allegations in a sworn testimony in front of the Commission.
Of the panel Next hearing It is set at 8 pm ET on Thursday.
