The constant stream of new evidence about missing text messages to and from the senior-most Department of Homeland Security (DHS) leaders and Secret Service personnel during the Jan. 6 attack on our country point to a possible ongoing effort to shield Trump and his allies from accountability.
July 14, 2022: DHS & Secret Service Reveal Missing Texts on Jan. 6 from Secret Service Records. In July, the Secret Service revealed that top agency officials deleted text messages relating to the events of Jan. 6 – in spite of prior records requests from four House committees and Inspector General Joseph V. Cuffari. The agency offered shifting explanations about the disappearing texts, first attributing the loss to a software upgrade, then as part of a device replacement program, then as part of a pre-planned “system migration.”
- Less Than Two Weeks After Jan. 6, House Committees Instructed the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) To Save All Related Documents and Communications. According to the Jan. 6 Committee, multiple House committees directed DHS components to produce “all documents or materials that refer or relate to events that could or ultimately did transpire on January 6” before the texts were deleted.
July 15, 2022: January 6th Committee Subpoenas Secret Service Director James Murray. After learning of the deleted Secret Service texts, the January 6th Committee issued a subpoena to Director James Murray, requesting all documents and texts from the Secret Service and DHS. After Hutchinson testified before the Jan. 6 Committee that Trump had ordered Secret Service staffers to take him to the Capitol, several Secret Service officials publicly disputed aspects of her account – prompting the Committee to seek more information from members of the Secret Service in light of the deleted texts.
July 26, 2022: Jan. 6 Committee Chair Called for Inspector General Cuffari to Recuse Himself Amid New Revelations. After whistleblowers revealed that Cuffari took steps to limit and delay the investigation, Jan. 6 committee chair Bennie G. Thompson (D-Miss.) sent a letter to Cuffari expressing that he did “not have confidence” that Caffari could conduct the investigation “thoroughly and with integrity, objectivity, and independence.”
- Cuffari Scrapped An Effort To Recover Deleted Secret Service Texts. Less than a month into the DHS investigation, Cuffari’s office abruptly changed plans, deciding it would not collect or review any agency phones. A member of Cuffari’s management team reportedly “wrote an email to investigators instructing them not to take the phones and not to seek any data from them.”
- Cuffari Stymied Early Investigation, Refusing DHS Help and Delaying Congressional Referral. Cuffari rejected offers from within his own office and around DHS to help recover missing or lost texts from Jan. 6. Staff investigators reportedly drafted a letter to all DHS agencies offering to help “recover any text messages or other data that might have been lost.” According to two whistleblowers, staffers planned to “contact all DHS agencies offering to have data specialists help retrieve messages from their phones,” and a DHS agency that guards federal buildings even offered their phones to the inspector general’s investigators. Cuffari ultimately ignored his staff and slowed the investigation.
July 29, 2022: DHS Reveals That Top DHS Officials Also Erased Texts From Jan. 6 During Presidential Transition. On Jul. 29, DHS officials revealed that text messages sent on Jan. 6 from government phones issued to three top two DHS officials under the Trump administration (Acting DHS Secretary Chad Wolf, Acting Deputy DHS Secretary Ken Cuccinelli, and Acting Under Secretary Tex Alles) were also lost during a ‘reset’ of the devices. The Federal Records Act and other laws require federal agencies to preserve government records, and it is a crime, punishable by fines and prison time, to willfully destroy government records.
- Cuffari Failed to Alert Congress & Other DHS Officials After Discovering Missing DHS Texts from Jan. 6. After he learned that text messages from Cuccinelli, Alles, and Wolf—three top-ranking DHS officials under the Trump administration—were also lost, Cuffari, “did not press the department’s leadership to explain why they did not preserve these records, nor try to recover them…Cuffari also did not alert Congress to the missing records.”
- Cuffari Learned of Missing Secret Service Texts Earlier Than Previously Known. On Jul. 29, CNN revealed that the Secret Service notified Cuffari’s office of missing text messages much earlier than previously thought. “After the data migration was completed, in May 2021 the Secret Service told Cuffari’s office that they tried to contact a cellular provider to retrieve the texts when they realized they were lost…”
- Facing Backlash, Inspector General Cuffari Rejects Transparency. After the news broke that he canceled efforts to recover the deleted texts, Cuffari’s office released a statement refusing to move forward with a transparent investigation: “OIG does not confirm the existence of or otherwise comment about ongoing reviews or criminal investigations, nor do we discuss our communications with Congress.”
