January 6 Committee: US Secret Service deleted text messages from Capitol riots day

The committee investigating whether Donald Trump encouraged the deadly Capitol riots has suffered a major setback – courtesy of the US Secret Service.

The US Secret Service, the law enforcement agency that protects the president, deleted agents’ text messages sent during the January 6 Capitol riot, a government watchdog said in a letter.

Joseph Cuffari, the inspector general of the Department of Homeland Security, told Congress in the letter dated Wednesday that his office has had difficulties obtaining records from the Secret Service from January 5 and 6, 2021.

The messages could be crucial to the House of Representatives and Justice Department investigations into whether Donald Trump and his close advisers encouraged the deadly insurrection by the former president’s supporters at the US Capitol, which aimed to prevent the certification of Democratic rival Joe Biden as the winner of the November 2020 election.

Secret Service agents were with Mr Trump during the day of the uprising, and were also with vice president Mike Pence, who went into hiding at the Capitol after pro-Trump rioters called for him to be hanged.

The committee is investigating whether Donald Trump and his close advisers encouraged the deadly insurrection. Picture: AFP

On June 29 a former White House staffer told the House January 6 investigation that Mr Trump had attempted to force the Secret Service to take him to the Capitol to join his supporters on that day.

“The Department notified us that many US Secret Service (USSS) text messages, from January 5 and 6, 2021, were erased as part of a device replacement program,” Cuffari wrote in the letter first reported by The Intercept and later published by Politico.

“The USSS erased those text messages after OIG requested records of electronic communications” for a review of January 6, he said, referring to the Office of the Inspector General.

In addition, he said, the department has stalled on providing other records to the OIG.

In a statement, Secret Service spokesman Anthony Guglielmi rejected the inspector general’s allegation.

He said the agents’ phones were being wiped as part of a planned replacement program that began before the OIG requested the information six weeks after the insurrection.

“The Secret Service notified DHS OIG of the loss of certain phones’ data, but confirmed to OIG that none of the texts it was seeking had been lost in the migration,” he said.

TRUMP ACCUSED OF TRYING TO CONTACT WITNESS

Donald Trump tried to contact a January 6 Committee witness due to appear before the hearings, according to explosive new testimony.

Republican congresswoman Liz Cheney told the committee looking into last year’s Capitol riots that the incident took place last week after the last committee hearing.

That hearing saw Cassidy Hutchinson, a former aide to chief of staff Mark Meadows, testify.

Ms Cheney said the witness “declined to answer” the former president’s call. Instead the witness sought their lawyer’s advice, who then contacted the committee.

“This committee has supplied that information to the Department of Justice,” Ms Cheney said at Tuesday’s hearing.

She added: “We will take any effort to influence witness testimony very seriously”.

During its seventh televised public hearing, the committee examined the impact of a tweet that Mr Trump sent on December 19 urging his supporters to descend on Washington on January 6 for a rally he promised would be “wild.”

The tweet was sent a little more than an hour after Mr Trump met at the White House with his lawyer Rudy Giuliani, former general Mike Flynn, and Sidney Powell, another lawyer, for a meeting which one White House aide described as “unhinged.”

Vice Chairwoman Liz Cheney listens during the sixth hearing by the House Select Committee to Investigate the January 6th Attack on the US Capitol, in Washington, DC. Picture: AFP

“Donald Trump’s 1.42am tweet electrified and galvanised his supporters, especially the dangerous extremists in the Oath Keepers, the Proud Boys and other racist and white nationalist groups spoiling for a fight against the government,” said committee member Jamie Raskin.

Members of the Proud Boys and the Oath Keepers stormed Congress on January 6, 2021 along with thousands of Mr Trump loyalists in an attempt to prevent the certification of Democrat Joe Biden’s presidential election victory, which Mr Trump falsely claims was marred by fraud.

“A president who lost an election deployed a mob which included dangerous extremists to attack the constitutional system of election and the peaceful transfer of power,” Mr Raskin said.

Stephanie Murphy, another committee member, said the tweet “served as a call to action, and in some cases as a call to arms, for many of president Trump’s most loyal supporters.”

The committee said two of Mr Trump’s closest backers, Mr Flynn and political consultant Roger Stone, had connections to the Oath Keepers.

The committee also said the march to the Capitol was planned in advance but Mr Trump decided not to announce it until a speech he made to supporters on the morning of January 6 near the White House.

“The evidence confirms that this was not a spontaneous call to action, but rather was a deliberate strategy decided upon in advance by the president,” Ms Murphy said.

Cassidy Hutchinson, top former aide to Trump White House chief of staff Mark Meadows, testified that Donald Trump tried to join supporters at the Capitol on January 6 but was stopped by his Secret Service agents. Picture: AFP

Cassidy Hutchinson, an aide to the former president’s chief of staff Mark Meadows, testified at a previous hearing that Mr Trump had intended to go to the Capitol with his supporters but was prevented from doing so by Secret Service agents.

Ms Hutchinson said she was told that Mr Trump had angrily lunged at his Secret Service driver and grabbed at the steering wheel of his limousine in a bid to join the crowd marching on Congress.

The committee has subpoenaed numerous advisers and aides to the former president.

It played the first videotaped excerpts on Tuesday from closed-doors testimony last week by former White House counsel Pat Cipollone.

In his testimony, Mr Cipollone said he agreed there was no evidence of significant election fraud and that Mr Trump should have conceded to Mr Biden.

More than 850 people have been arrested in connection with the storming of Congress by Trump supporters.

Five members of the Proud Boys were indicted in June on seditious conspiracy charges and 11 members of the Oath Keepers face the same charges, which carry a sentence of up to 20 years in prison.

The assault on the Capitol left at least five people dead and 140 police officers injured, and followed a fiery speech by Mr Trump to thousands of his supporters near the White House.

Mr Trump was impeached for a historic second time by the House of Representatives after the riot – he was charged with inciting an insurrection – but was acquitted by the Senate.

In a statement on Tuesday on the Truth Social platform, Mr Trump denounced the committee as “Political Hacks and Thugs.”

“Have you seen them before?” he asked

“Yes, they are essentially the same lunatics that drove the Country ‘crazy’ with their lies and made up stories.”

Originally published as January 6 Committee: US Secret Service deleted text messages from Capitol riots day