Rep. Adam Kinzinger (R-Ill), a member of the House select committee investigating the January 6 attack said it is “crazy” that the US Secret Service would delete text messages relating to the attack on the Capitol.
“In the very least, it is quite crazy that the Secret Service would actually end up deleting anything related to one of the more infamous days in American history, particularly when it comes to the role of the Secret Service,” Kinzinger told CBS “Face the Nation” host Margaret Brennan on Sunday.
This comes days after the Inspector General of the Department of Homeland Security sent a letter to the House and Senate Homeland Security Committees informing them that the Secret Service deleted text messages from January 5 and 6, 2021, shortly after they were requested by oversight officials investigating the agency’s response to the US Capitol riot, according to CNN.
The Secret Service later denied the allegations and blamed the loss of some messages and other data on a “reset” of mobile phones.
“The insinuation that the Secret Service maliciously deleted text messages following a request is false. In fact, the Secret Service has been fully cooperating with the Department of Homeland Security Office of Inspector General (DHS OIG) in every respect—whether it be interviews, documents, emails, or texts,” Secret Service Chief of Communications Anthony Guglielmi said in a statement. “First, in January 2021, before any inspection was opened by OIG on this subject, the Secret Service began to reset its mobile phones to factory settings as part of a pre-planned, three-month system migration. In that process, data resident on some phones was lost.”
Kinzinger said on Sunday that the agency is contradicting itself, saying in one case that they had lost all or some of the texts requested, while in another instance saying they had turned over all relevant messages to the OIG.
“The- the IG came in front of us and said, look, we have been working hard to get this,” Kinzinger said. “They claim it was this technological change, ‘we moved everything, we lost these texts.’ And then they also put out a statement, though, that said, we’ve only lost some of the texts and everything relevant to this investigation has been turned over. So those are very conflicting statements.”
The panel issued a subpoena to the Secret Service seeking text messages and other phone records by Tuesday. The agency said it will cooperate.
