The disclosure drew concern from the House committee investigating the attack, which has heard testimony that President Donald J. Trump wanted agents to take him to the Capitol that day.
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“It’s important for us to get as much information about how this discrepancy occurred,” said Bennie Thompson, the chairman of the House Jan. 6 committee.
WASHINGTON — Text messages sent and received by Secret Service agents around the time of the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol last year have been erased, an inspector general said on Thursday, prompting concern from the House committee investigating the assault.
In a letter obtained by The New York Times, the inspector general for the Department of Homeland Security, the parent agency of the Secret Service, reported that many of the agents’ texts were erased as part of a device replacement program even after the inspector general had requested them as part of his inquiry into the events of Jan. 6.
The letter was reported earlier by The Intercept.
Representative Bennie Thompson, Democrat of Mississippi and the chairman of both the Jan. 6 committee and the House Homeland Security Committee, said he received a letter on Thursday from the inspector general informing him of the erased text messages.
“It’s concerning,” Mr. Thompson said in an interview. “It’s important for us to get as much information about how this discrepancy occurred.”
The news of the erased text messages comes as the Jan. 6 committee is investigating an incident involving former President Donald J. Trump and the Secret Service that occurred in his armored Suburban S.U.V. soon after his speech on the Ellipse ended on Jan. 6.
Key Revelations From the Jan. 6 Hearings
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Making a case against Trump. The House committee investigating the Jan. 6 attack is laying out evidence that could allow prosecutors to indict former President Donald J. Trump, though the path to a criminal trial is uncertain. Here are the main themes that have emerged so far:
An unsettling narrative. During the first hearing, the committee described in vivid detail what it characterized as an attempted coup orchestrated by the former president that culminated in the assault on the Capitol. At the heart of the gripping story were three main players: Mr. Trump, the Proud Boys and a Capitol Police officer.
Creating election lies. In its second hearing, the panel showed how Mr. Trump ignored aides and advisers as he declared victory prematurely and relentlessly pressed claims of fraud he was told were wrong. “He’s become detached from reality if he really believes this stuff,” William P. Barr, the former attorney general, said of Mr. Trump during a videotaped interview.
Pressuring Pence. Mr. Trump continued pressuring Vice President Mike Pence to go along with a plan to overturn his loss even after he was told it was illegal, according to testimony laid out by the panel during the third hearing. The committee showed how Mr. Trump’s actions led his supporters to storm the Capitol, sending Mr. Pence fleeing for his life.
Fake elector plan. The committee used its fourth hearing to detail how Mr. Trump was personally involved in a scheme to put forward fake electors. The panel also presented fresh details on how the former president leaned on state officials to invalidate his defeat, opening them up to violent threats when they refused.
Strong arming the Justice Dept. During the fifth hearing, the panel explored Mr. Trump’s wide-ranging and relentless scheme to misuse the Justice Department to keep himself in power. The panel also presented evidence that at least half a dozen Republican members of Congress sought pre-emptive pardons.
The surprise hearing. Cassidy Hutchinson, a former White House aide, delivered explosive testimony during the panel’s sixth session, saying that the president knew the crowd on Jan. 6 was armed, but wanted to loosen security. She also painted Mark Meadows, the White House chief of staff, as disengaged and unwilling to act as rioters approached the Capitol.
Planning a march. Mr. Trump planned to lead a march to the Capitol on Jan. 6 but wanted it to look spontaneous, the committee revealed during its seventh hearing. Representative Liz Cheney also said that Mr. Trump had reached out to a witness in the panel’s investigation, and that the committee had informed the Justice Department of the approach.
Cassidy Hutchinson, a former White House aide, testified before the panel that a top White House official told her Mr. Trump had become enraged when his security detail refused to take him to the Capitol.
Ms. Hutchinson said she had been told by Anthony M. Ornato, a deputy White House chief of staff, that Mr. Trump tried to grab the wheel of his vehicle when he was told he could not go to the Capitol to join his supporters, some of whom he had been told were armed. Ms. Hutchinson also said Mr. Ornato told her the president “lunged” at his lead Secret Service agent, Robert Engel.
Secret Service officials, speaking on the condition of anonymity, disputed some details in her account. But the officials did say Mr. Engel, Mr. Ornato and the driver of the Suburban were prepared to testify again before the committee and confirm another element of Ms. Hutchinson’s testimony: that Mr. Trump demanded his agents take him to the Capitol, even after they emphasized that it was too dangerous for him to go.
Both Mr. Engel and Mr. Ornato had already spoken to the committee’s investigators before Ms. Hutchinson’s testimony. Mr. Thompson said on Thursday that neither man had yet come in for another interview, but he said the panel was in discussions with them.
The committee also interviewed an officer with Washington’s Metropolitan Police Department who was part of the presidential motorcade that day and told the panel that Mr. Trump’s departure from the Ellipse was delayed because of his anger over not being allowed to go to the Capitol, according to two people familiar with the officer’s testimony.
The officer was not in the S.U.V. with Mr. Trump, but heard communications concerning the altercation and corroborated that the incident occurred, the people said. The officer’s testimony was reported earlier by CNN.
The disclosure about the Secret Service text messages came from Joseph V. Cuffari, the Homeland Security Department’s inspector general. He wrote to the House and Senate committees with jurisdiction over the department on Wednesday, saying that many Secret Service text messages from Jan. 5 and Jan. 6, 2021, “were erased as part of a device replacement program.”
Mr. Cuffari wrote that the texts were erased after the inspector general’s office started an investigation into Jan. 6 and requested electronic communications from the agency. He also reported that Secret Service personnel were declining to provide records to his office without first having department lawyers review them, a process that he said was causing “weekslong delays” and “confusion.”
A spokesman for the Secret Service did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Source: nytimes.com
