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A government watchdog has accused the US Secret Service of deleting texts from January 5 and 6, 2021, after his office requested them as part of an investigation into the attack on the US Capitol, according to a letter sent to lawmakers this week.
Joseph W. Kufari, head of the Department of Homeland Security’s Office of Inspector General, wrote to the leaders of the House and Senate Homeland Security Committees that the text messages had disappeared and that efforts to investigate the Jan. 6 attack 2021 have been terminated be prevented.
“The department has notified us that many United States Secret Service (USSS) text messages from January 5 and 6, 2021 have been deleted as part of a device replacement program,” he wrote in a Wednesday letter obtained by The Washington Post. The letter was previously reported by the Intercept and CNN.
Kufari emphasized that the deletions came “afterwards“ The inspector general’s office requested copies of the text messages for its own investigation and signaled that they were part of a pattern of DHS resisting its inquiries. Staff members are required by law to turn over records so he can audit the sprawling national security agency, but he said they have “repeatedly” refused to provide them until a lawyer has reviewed them.
“This review resulted in weeks-long delays in receiving records from the OIG and created confusion as to whether all records were submitted,” he wrote, and offered to brief the House and Senate committees on “access issues.”
The Secret Service text messages could provide insight into the agency’s actions on the day of the riot and possibly those of President Donald Trump. A former White House official last month told a special House committee investigating the attack on the Capitol that Trump knew his supporters were armed, wanted to lead the crowd toward the Capitol, and physically assaulted the senior Secret Service agent who told him. that he can’t.
Secret Service spokesman Anthony Guglielmi said Thursday that the agency did not maliciously delete text messages after a request.
“In fact, the Secret Service is cooperating fully with the OIG in every way — whether it’s interviews, documents, emails or text messages,” he said.
“First, in January 2021, prior to the commencement of any OIG review of this matter, USSS began resetting its cell phones to factory settings as part of a pre-planned quarterly system migration. In the process, data resident on some phones was lost,” he said. “DHS OIG requested electronic communications for the first time on February 26, 2021, after the migration was underway. The Secret Service notified the DHS OIG of the loss of data from certain phones, but confirmed to the OIG that none of the texts sought were lost in the migration.”
“Second, the DHS OIG’s claim about DHS’s cooperation in its investigation is neither correct nor novel. To the contrary, DHS OIG has previously alleged that its officials did not receive appropriate and timely access to materials due to counsel review,” Guglielmi said. “DHS has repeatedly and publicly debunked this claim, including in response to the OIG’s last two semiannual reports to Congress. It is not clear why the OIG is raising this issue again.”
Kufari, nominated by Trump in 2019 and confirmed by the Senate, has faced significant criticism since taking office. His first-year audits fell to historic lows, he clashed with Immigration and Customs Enforcement over the credibility of a detention center audit, and he blocked investigations into the actions of the Secret Service regarding the protests in Lafayette Square after the killing of George Floyd and the spread of the coronavirus in the agency’s ranks, documents show.
The OIG office is being investigated by the Council of Inspectors General on Integrity and Efficiency (CIGIE), an independent body in the executive branch, for undisclosed allegations of misconduct, according to an internal email circulated to the office in January.
The nonprofit Project on Government Oversight (POGO), an independent watchdog, called on President Biden to remove Kufari.
Cuffari’s office did not respond to requests for comment Thursday, and DHS had no immediate comment on his allegations.
A person briefed on the Secret Service’s reaction to Kufari’s letter said the agency rejected his characterizations that they eliminated or deleted records after Kufari’s office requested them. Like others interviewed for this report, this person spoke on condition of anonymity to share confidential internal discussions.
The Secret Service began a long-planned agency-wide replacement of employee phones to improve agency communications in January 2021, according to two people briefed on the documents request.
It wasn’t until sometime in February 2021 that Kufari’s office asked the Secret Service to release records that focused on Jan. 6 and the days leading up to the attack on the Capitol, seeking internal agency communications, memos, emails and phone records, such as text messages.
from at the time of the request, the people said a third of Secret Service personnel had received new cellphones.
The bulk of the replacement program began with staff members in Washington offices, and if they don’t back up their old text messages, the people said, information from Jan. 6 and the days before is lost. This can be accepted include the texts sent and received by former White House Deputy Chief of Staff Tony Ornato and former Trump security chief Bobby Engle and other senior Secret Service officials.
This device replacement program and the resulting failed backup of text messages does not seem to affect emails.
The Secret Service has a policy requiring employees to archive and store government communications when they retire old electronic or telephone devices, but in practice, employees do not permanently archive text messages from phones.
A similar issue arose in 2018 when the Justice Department’s inspector general said it used “forensic tools” to recover missing text messages from two senior FBI officials who investigated Hillary Clinton and Trump and exchanged notes , critical of the president. The missing messages drew criticism as Republican Party leaders and the president questioned how the FBI had failed to preserve them.
The Secret Service has had a history of important records disappearing under the cover of night and agency officials refusing to cooperate when investigators call seeking information.
When a congressional committee investigated assassinations and assassination attempts, it sought boxes of records that reportedly showed the Secret Service received enough advance warning and threats before President John F. Kennedy’s death that white racists and other organizations were conspiring to kill Kennedy using high-powered rifles from tall buildings. The Secret Service told investigators the records were destroyed as part of the normal destruction of old records — days after investigators requested them.
Sen. Gary Peters (D-Mich.), chairman of the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee, said lawmakers “need to get to the bottom of whether the Secret Service destroyed federal records or whether the Department of Homeland Security obstructed oversight.” .
“The DHS inspector general needs these records to conduct his independent oversight, and the public deserves to have a complete picture of what happened on January 6,” he said in a statement. “I will be learning more from the DHS inspector general about these troubling allegations.”
Devlin Barrett in Machipongo, Virginia, contributed to this report.
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