(Bloomberg) — Texts or chat messages between Secret Service personnel on the day of US Capitol assault are included in a substantial tranche of additional material recently obtained by the House committee investigating the insurrection.
(Bloomberg) — Texts or chat messages between Secret Service personnel on the day of US Capitol assault are included in a substantial tranche of additional material recently obtained by the House committee investigating the insurrection.
“It’s a combination of a number of text messages, radio traffic, that kind of thing. Thousands of exhibits,” Representative Bennie Thompson, a Mississippi Democrat who chairs the committee, said Wednesday.
Representative Zoe Lofgren of California, another Democrat on the panel, described some of the records as “relevant” and worthwhile to the inquiry into events on and around Jan. 6, 2021.
Thompson said he could not yet describe what, if any, new information has been gleaned about that day. He also couldn’t say, at this point, whether any of the text messages — which are primarily from Jan. 5 and 6 — are among those previously believed to be missing or erased.
“We’ve got a number of staffers going through it all right now,” he said. “It’s a work in progress.”
The Secret Service said there were no new text messages in the information given to the committee, suggesting Thompson may be referring to Microsoft Teams chat logs.
“While no additional text messages were recovered, we have provided a significant level of detail from emails, radio transmissions, Microsoft Teams chat messages and exhibits that address aspects of planning, operations and communications surrounding January 6th,” spokesman Anthony Guglielmi said in a statement.
The Secret Service has been in the spotlight since former White House aide Cassidy Hutchinson testified that she was told on the day of the insurrection that then-President Donald Trump exploded at Secret Service agents who refused to take him from a rally near the White House to the Capitol to join protesters.
The committee also has been digging into security concerns surrounding then-Vice President Mike Pence, who had gone to the Capitol to preside over the Electoral College certification of Joe Biden’s victory in the 2020 election. There was testimony that Pence disagreed with the Secret Service agents at the scene to get into his armored vehicle during the attack, fearing he’d be spirited away.
That raised questions about whether removing Pence might have figured in plans to interfere with the certification of Biden’s victory and, more generally, whether Trump may have somehow co-opted the agency.
Thompson announced in July it was subpoenaing the Secret Service for records upon learning some agency text messages from Jan. 5 and 6 were allegedly missing. Included in the subpoena were demands not only for texts and other data, but also “any after-action reports” issued “pertaining or relating in any way to the events of Jan. 6, 2021.”
The service acknowledged that some texts of 24 of its employees from Jan. 5 and 6 were erased despite federal laws requiring they be kept, but said it was an accident that occurred during a shift to new mobile phones. That occurred, despite at least two previous demands from Congress that it preserve material related to the attack.
An agency spokesman denied the missing texts had been deliberately erased. But the episode spawned calls for multiple investigations.
(Adds comment from Secret Service in sixth paragraph)
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