Secret Service handed over a single text exchange amid uproar over deleted Jan 6 evidence

The Secret Service has only provided one text exchange to the DHS inspector general despite receiving a request for a month of texts from 24 members of staff.

The news was revealed in a letter to the January 6 committee, CNN reported.

Inspector General Joseph Cuffari recently sent a letter to Congress, alleging that the Secret Service had not kept records of evidence required for the investigation into the Capitol riot.

The inspector general had already received a number of documents, such as “hundreds of thousands of disclosures of agency documents, policies, radio communications, emails, briefings and interviews”.

In June of last year, he requested texts to and from 24 Secret Service agents between 7 December 2020 and 8 January 2021, the letter states.

Assistant Director Ronald Rowe said in a letter to the panel that “the Secret Service submitted the responsive records it identified, namely, a text message conversation from former US Capitol Police Chief Steven Sund to former Secret Service Uniformed Division Chief Thomas Sullivan requesting assistance on January 6, 2021, and advised the agency did not have any further records responsive to the DHS OIG’s request for text messages”.

California Democrat and January 6 panel member Zoe Lofgren told MSNBC on Tuesday that the committee had been sent “one text message” that she hadn’t reviewed at that time. She said the committee would be “pursuing more information as a committee soon”.

“In their letter, they gave no indication that they have secured the phones in question and done some forensic work with them. That’s something we want to know”, Ms Lofgren said. “This obviously, this doesn’t look good. Coincidences can happen but we really need to get to the bottom of this and get a lot more information than we have currently.”

The Secret Service was also sent requests from Congress on 16 January 2021 asking that they preserve and produce documents and other materials connected to the events of January 6, 2020.

A subsequent request was sent in March from multiple House committees requesting communications “received, prepared or sent” between 5 and 7 January.

The agency said it was the responsibility of individual members of staff to preserve the required records on the phones. The letter stated that the Secret Service didn’t give staff a “step-by-step” guide to preserve materials on their phones, such as texts, before the phone migration beginning on 27 January.

“All Secret Service employees are responsible for appropriately preserving government records that may be created via text messaging”, the letter said.

The agency added that it’s still trying to understand if any pertinent information was lost during the phone migration, but added that it was “currently unaware of text messages issued by Secret Service employees” requested by the inspector general “that were not retained”.

“The Secret Service continues to engage in extensive efforts to further assess whether any relevant text messages sent or received by 24 individuals identified by the DHS OIG were lost due to the Intune migration and, if so, whether such texts are recoverable”, Mr Rowe said in the letter. “These efforts include the pulling of any available metadata to determine what, if any, texts were sent or received on the devices of the identified individuals.”

The agency said it was speaking to the 24 individuals “to determine if messages were stored in locations that were not already searched by the Secret Service”.

The letter said that the Secret Service last week handed over 10,569 pages of documents in an initial response to the subpoena from Congress. The documents included after-action reports, as well as a timeline and changes in policy following January 6.

The service also provided the panel with details of how it classified the moving of then-Vice President Mike Pence during the siege on Congress, calling it an “Unusual Protective Event”.

The agency requested that the panel speak with the service before making any of the materials public as they sent the documents over without redactions.

Florida Democrat and panel member Stephanie Murphy told MSNBC on Tuesday that “the Secret Service adamantly denied that they were either stonewalling ... or that the text messages were lost, and then when we subpoenaed those text messages, we have now received additional info. It ...leaves us with a lot more questions”.