The US National Archives has asked the Secret Service, the agency in charge of the president’s protection, to conduct an internal investigation into ‘the potential unauthorized deletion’ of agency text messages sent and received during last year’s Jan 6 attack on the US Capitol. According to Politico, the National Archives said in a statement on Tuesday that the Secret Service has been informed under federal law that it must submit the probe report within 30 days with a detailed explanation of why the agency deleted the relevant text messages.
It comes just days after the Department of Homeland Security inspector general, the Secret Service’s watchdog, told Congress at a Jan. 6 hearing that he was told the texts were no longer in existence when he asked for a copy of them. The National Archives stated, ‘This report must include a complete description of the records affected…a statement of the exact circumstances surrounding the deletion of messages [and] all agency actions taken to salvage, retrieve, or reconstruct the records.’
Recognizing the order from the National Archives, Secret Service spokesman Anthony Guglielmi responded in a statement that the agency ‘respects and supports the important role of the National Archives and Records Administration in ensuring the preservation of government records. In this review, they will have our full support’. According to the Secret Service, data on some phones was lost during a pre-planned ‘system migration’ in January 2021. The Secret Service previously told the Associated Press that ‘the insinuation that the Secret Service maliciously deleted text messages in response to a request is false’.
‘In fact, the Secret Service has been fully cooperating with the OIG in every respect — whether it’s interviews, documents, emails, or texts,’ Secret Service spokesman Guglielmi said. Cassidy Hutchinson, a key witness and former White House aide, testified before the US House committing conducting the investigation that Donald Trump directed Secret Service officials to remove magnetometers at an Ellipse rally to protest the election results so that armed supporters could approach the stage.
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