Text communications that would have corroborated or refuted some of the most astounding testimonies concerning President Donald Trump’s activities on January 6, 2021, were deleted by the Secret Service.
news source: based on yahoo news website
Officials with the Secret Service claim that the communications were deleted as part of a prearranged “reset” of their phones. However, House legislators have questioned that explanation for the missing texts, which cover crucial events up to and including the uprising on January 6.
“I smell a rat,” Rep. Jamie Raskin, D-Md., told a reporter Wednesday.
The Secret Service has been under pressure to provide texts and other information as part of their investigations into the attack from members of the House select committee looking into the events of January 6 and others.
According to the federal watchdog that is in charge of monitoring the Department of Homeland Security, press reports from last week indicated that the Secret Service had erased the requested texts.
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At the time, Secret Service spokesperson Anthony Guglielmi referred to the claims as “categorically incorrect.” According to a Secret Service statement, the organization was carrying out a planned reset of equipment when the DHS inspector general requested that records be protected.
However, the text messages were requested before they were deleted. “Congress informed the Secret Service it needed to preserve and produce documents related to January 6 on January 16, 2021, and again on January 25, 2021, for four different committees who were investigating what happened, according to the source,” CNN reported Wednesday. “The Secret Service migration did not start until January 27, 2021.”
The Jan. 6 committee, which includes Raskin, subpoenaed the Secret Service for the messages immediately after the reports. According to a committee aide, the agency provided the panel with one text message earlier this week. The aide said that legislators are still considering how to locate the texts.
The Jan. 6 committee issued a statement on Wednesday saying, “We have concerns regarding a system migration that we have been informed resulted in the loss of Secret Service mobile phone data.”
In a briefing with reporters on Wednesday, a committee staff member stated that “members are still determining exactly how to access the information we’re seeking.”
Late last month, a former Trump White House aide named Cassidy Hutchinson relayed a story from another aide named Tony Ornato, who used to work for the Secret Service and is now a high-ranking official in the agency. Tony Ornato claimed that Trump lunged at his security detail and tried to force them to drive him to the Capitol to join the rioters.
Secret Service officials, speaking anonymously, denied that account. But Ornato and another agent, Bobby Engel, have not yet spoken publicly about the incident. A Washington, D.C., police officer who was part of Trump’s motorcade that day confirmed Hutchinson’s testimony in an interview with House investigators recently, according to a CNN report.
The striking image of Trump shoving at his own guardians garnered the most attention, but House investigators have found a number of additional incidents about which there are still unanswered concerns.
Former Vice President Mike Pence’s ex-counsel, Greg Jacob, recalled one especially gruesome episode in which agents attempted to transport Pence from a safe position beneath the Capitol to Joint Base Andrews during the attack on the Capitol.
However, based on Trump’s lawyer John Eastman’s legal analysis, the seemingly innocent request may have been sufficient for Trump to assert that the election result was never validated and that therefore the transfer of authority to Joe Biden was not complete.
“I know you, I trust you, but you’re not the one behind the wheel,” Pence told one of his agents with him at the time, according to Jacob.
Pence and his team have not explained exactly what he meant by that statement. But Washington Post reporters Carol Leonnig and Philip Rucker reported in their book, “I Alone Can Fix It,” that Pence was wary of unchecked support for Trump among the rank and file of the Secret Service.
Additionally, Keith Kellogg, Pence’s former national security advisor, said in court that he had to tell Ornato on January 6 not to order the vice president to be driven from the Capitol.
