The inspector general wrote that the Secret Service should stop investigating the matter because it could interfere with the inspector general’s own investigation into what happened to the agency’s text messages.
The letter adds to the growing tension between the Secret Service and the DHS inspector general over potentially missing text messages being sought by a House special committee as part of its investigation into the actions and movements of former President Donald Trump on January 6, 2021.
“To ensure the integrity of our investigation, the USSS should not engage in any additional investigative activities regarding the collection and preservation of the evidence identified above,” DHS Deputy Inspector General Gladys Ayala wrote in a letter to the Director of Secrets James Murray services on Wednesday evening. “This includes immediately refraining from interviewing potential witnesses, collecting devices or taking other actions that would interfere with an ongoing criminal investigation.”
The inspector general wrote that the Secret Service must explain what interviews have already been conducted in connection with the text messages, along with “the scope of the questioning and what, if any, warnings were given to the witness(es).” The inspector general told the Secret Service to respond by Monday.
The new letter comes after the Secret Service was only able to provide one text message to the inspector general, who had requested monthly records of 24 Secret Service employees, according to a letter to the select committee.
CNN has reached out to the Secret Service and the DHS inspector general for comment.
The directive could complicate the Secret Service’s response to a subpoena received by a special House committee last week, as well as to a request from the National Archives this week to the DHS records officer asking the agency to clarify whether the text messages were deleted and explain why.
The chairman of the select committee, Democratic Rep. Bennie Thompson of Mississippi, wrote in a letter to the Secret Service director that the group is seeking text messages from Jan. 5-6, 2021.
In a joint statement Wednesday, Thompson and committee Vice Chair Liz Cheney said they “have concerns” about how Secret Service cellphone data was wiped.
“The procedure for retaining content prior to this purge appears to have been inconsistent with federal records retention requirements and may constitute a possible violation of the Federal Records Act,” they said.
The Secret Service told the committee this week that it is engaged in an “extensive effort” to determine whether any text messages were lost and whether they can be recovered. Those steps include “extracting all available metadata to determine what, if any, texts were sent or received on the identified individuals’ devices,” the agency said in a letter, as well as interviewing the 24 individuals “to determine whether the messages were stored in locations not yet searched by the Secret Service.”
According to a letter that the inspector general sent to the special committee of the House.
The Secret Service previously explained that agents must perform the required backup of the records from their phones. The letter said the service provided staff with a “step-by-step” guide to saving mobile phone content, including text messages, ahead of the phone migration, which began on January 27, 2021. It went on to explain that ” all Secret Service employees are responsible for the proper preservation of government records that may be created by text messages.”
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