The chief inspector in the Ministry of Homeland Security writes in a letter that the news agency AP has gained access to that messages from 5 and 6 January were deleted in connection with the replacement of units.
The deletion allegedly took place after the inspector requested a transcript of the communication between the Secret Service agents as part of the investigation into the attack on Congress.
The alleged deletion of the messages will probably be of interest to the January 6 committee, which is investigating the role of former President Donald Trump in the attack.
Among other things, the Secret Service is responsible for protecting the President of the United States.
The committee has focused on the Secret Service after Cassidy Hutchinson, a former White House adviser, told how Donald Trump ended up in a clinch with them on January 6.
Sent to Congress
In addition, staff from the ministry must have been informed that they could not hand over documents to the chief inspector, and that all such documents first had to be reviewed by the ministry’s lawyers.
– This review led to several weeks of delays before the chief inspector obtained the documents and created confusion as to whether all documents had been handed over, the letter reads, which is dated Wednesday and sent to leaders of the committees for domestic security in Congress.
Rejects the allegations
The Secret Service rejects the allegations in the letter as untrue.
– The claim that the Secret Service dishonestly deleted text messages after a request is untrue. In fact, the Secret Service has cooperated fully with the chief inspector in every way – whether it is interviews, documents, emails or text messages, says spokesman Anthony Guglielmi.
The chief inspector did not request the reports until February 26, when the transfer to new units was “well underway”, according to Guglielmi.
“The Secret Service informed the chief inspector that data from certain telephones had been lost, but confirmed that none of the text messages the chief inspector requested had been lost in the transfer,” he said.
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