Aerial view of the United States military headquarters, the Pentagon.
Jason Reid | Reuters
Text messages received and sent by senior Pentagon officials who were part of the Trump administration on Jan. 6, 2021, were deleted from their government-issued phones, according to a federal court document that cited statements from the Department of Defense and the Army. .
The text messages from that day — when a mob of Trump supporters stormed the U.S. Capitol — “were not preserved and therefore could not be searched,” according to that filing.
The document said Defense Department and Army officials said: “When an employee separates from [Department of Defense] or the military he or she hands over the government-issued phone and the phone is wiped.”
The filing in U.S. District Court in Washington, D.C., was a joint status report by attorneys involved in a lawsuit by the watchdog group American Oversight against the Department of Defense, the Army, the National Guard and the Department of Justice. That lawsuit is seeking records related to Jan. 6 from a group of former Pentagon officials.
The status report was submitted in March.
But that became clear on Tuesday when American Oversight asked Attorney General Merrick Garland to open an investigation into the Pentagon’s “failure to preserve communications, which include those of former acting Secretary of Defense Chris Miller and former Secretary of the Army Ryan McCarthy, from Jan. 6 ,” the group said.
The group noted in its letter to Garland that the Department of Homeland Security’s inspector general is currently conducting a criminal investigation into the Jan. 6 deletion of text messages from the cellphones of Secret Service agents and employees.
“The apparent deletion of records since January 6 by multiple agencies reinforces the need for an interagency investigation into the possible destruction of federal records,” American Oversight Executive Director Heather Sawyer wrote to Garland.
“Therefore, we urge you to exercise your authority to take over the investigation into the alleged deletion of DHS records, as requested by [Sen. Dick Durbin, D-Illinois]and also to investigate [Department of Defense] for the same conduct — deleting or destroying records previously stored on those officials’ mobile devices, including any text messages (or messages on similar apps, such as Signal or WhatsApp) about agency business on January 6, 2021. Sawyer wrote.
Last week, the House special committee investigating the Capitol riot released a video of Miller’s testimony, during which the former acting defense secretary contradicted former President Donald Trump’s claims that he had requested at least 10,000 troops. of the National Guard to be stationed in Washington before January 6.
“I never received any instructions or orders, nor did I know of any such plans,” Miller said in his testimony. “There was no order from the president.
The House committee’s public hearing on July 21 focused on the fact that for 187 minutes on January 6, 2021, Trump failed to take any action to stop the attack on the Capitol by his supporters.
“Within 15 minutes of leaving his rally, Trump knew the Capitol was under attack. But what did he do? He went to his dining room, turned on the TV and watched the deadly uprising he instigated in real time as entertainment,” Rep. Jimmy Gomez, D-Calif., tweeted during the hearing.
Add Comment