A report published Wednesday evening raises new questions about the watchdog agency that alerted Congress to vanishing Secret Service text messages around the time of the Capitol riot.
Sources told the Washington Post that the inspector general of the Department of Homeland Security, the parent agency of the Secret Service, knew in February that the cellphone texts had been erased.
DHS Inspector General Joseph Cuffari informed two House committees just last week that many messages from Jan. 5 and Jan. 6, 2021, the day of the Capitol riot, had been erased"as part of a device-replacement program.
Investigators want to gain access to these text messages because they could offer insight into what former President Donald Trump was doing before, during, and after the Capitol riot.The report said Cuffari's office did not directly respond to the allegations about the alert, but it did share concerns about the Secret Service and others delaying its investigation into the Capitol riot in semiannual reports to Congress, though text messages were not mentioned.
The National Archives called on the Secret Service on Tuesday to investigate whether the messages were “improperly deleted,” giving officials 30 days to detail their findings.
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