A government watchdog group said Tuesday that the Pentagon “deleted” text messages from the cellphones of key Trump administration Defense Department officials after the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol and is now calling on Attorney General Merrick Garland to launch an “interagency investigation into possible destruction of federal records.”
American Oversight, which describes itself as a nonprofit watchdog that uses public records requests to fight corruption, filed several Freedom of Information Act requests within days of Jan. 6, 2021, seeking text messages and other communications between senior Pentagon officials, including Acting Defense Secretary Chris Miller, his Chief of Staff Kash Patel and Army Secretary Ryan McCarthy.
In March, the Pentagon filed court documents acknowledging that text messages belonging to those individuals had been deleted, but framed the action as standard operating procedure when an employee leaves the department.
“When an employee leaves the Department of Defense or the military, he or she surrenders the government-issued phone and the phone is deleted,” the Pentagon wrote in response to American Oversight’s FOIA lawsuit. “For trustees no longer with the agency, the text messages were not preserved and therefore could not be searched.”
But in its letter to Garland on Tuesday, American Oversight accused the Pentagon of knowingly deleting records under the current FOIA — and framed the deletion as another effort by those agencies to obscure the actions of administration officials.
“In short, the Department of Defense apparently deleted communications from senior Department of Defense and Army officials in response to pending FOIA requests that could shed light on the actions of senior Trump administration officials on the day of the failed insurgency,” it said American Oversight Executive Director Heather Sawyer.
The deletion of DOD employees’ text messages was first reported by CNN.
An aerial view of the Pentagon is shown in this July 3, 2022 file photo.
Bill Clark/CQ-Roll Call, Inc via Getty Images, FILE
Sawyer called on Garland to investigate not only the Pentagon’s conduct, but also the apparent deletion of their agents’ text messages by the US Secret Service.
“U.S. Oversight accordingly urges you to investigate the actions of the Department of Defense to authorize the destruction of records potentially related to this important matter of national concern and historical importance,” the letter said.
Reached for comment, Army spokeswoman Col. Kathy Wilkinson told ABC News, “It is our policy not to comment on ongoing litigation.”
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