Secret Service turned over just one text after records request: report

The Secret Service provided only one text exchange to the Department of Homeland Security’s inspector general for a month’s worth of records requests for 24 Secret Service personnel, CNN reported on Wednesday. 

CNN obtained a letter from the Secret Service to the House select committee investigating the Jan. 6, 2021, Capitol riot, revealing that Inspector General Joseph Cuffari requested in June 2021 that the Secret Service provide text messages for two dozen personnel from Dec. 8, 2020, to Jan. 8, 2021. 

The letter’s revelation comes in the aftermath of Cuffari informing the committee that the Secret Service had deleted text messages from Jan. 5 and Jan. 6, 2021, as “part of a device-replacement program” after the OIG had requested electronic communications records. 

The committee subpoenaed the Secret Service for texts, but the agency was not able to provide the committee with texts from those two days, Rep. Stephanie Murphy (D-Fla.), a committee member, told MSNBC. It did provide other records. 

Ronald Rowe, the assistant director for the Office of Intergovernmental and Legislative Affairs for the Secret Service, said in the letter that the agency submitted a conversation between former U.S. Capitol Police Chief Steven Sund and former Secret Service Uniformed Division Chief Thomas Sullivan, in which Sund requested assistance on Jan. 6. 

Rowe said the agency advised that it did not have any additional records that satisfy the inspector general’s request for text messages, CNN reported. 

The Secret Service deferred comment to the House Jan. 6 select committee since the letter is in response to a congressional subpoena.

A spokesperson said the committee is best suited to provide comment when appropriate.

The Office of the Inspector General and committee did not immediately return requests from The Hill for comment.

The Secret Service has maintained that the texts were not deleted with malicious intent. 

The agency said in the letter that it was still seeking to determine if any relevant information was deleted during the replacement program, but it is “currently unaware” of text messages that the inspector general requested that were “not retained,” CNN reported. 

The Secret Service is also interviewing the 24 personnel to determine if the messages were stored in locations the agency has not yet searched. 

The letter states that the agency provided more than 10,000 pages of documents in its initial response to the subpoena.

Updated at 11:24 a.m.