The Secret Service was sent a subpoena Friday night by the House committee looking into the Capitol riot on January 6, 2021, about texts that were allegedly deleted around the time of the attack, Fox News informed.
The texts were reportedly deleted, according to committee chairman Bennie Thompson, a Democrat from Mississippi, who made the announcement in a statement Friday evening.
In a “device-replacement campaign,” the USSS deleted SMS communications from January 5 and 6, 2021, Thompson has claimed.
James Murray, the director of USSS, who will be leaving his position at the end of the month, received the letter from the panel.
The subpoenas were issued only a few hours after the panel’s secret briefing on January 6 from the department’s watchdog, which is responsible for overseeing the Secret Service.
Concerning claims that the Secret Service deleted messages from approximately January 6, 2021, the watchdog briefed the committee.
The Secret Service deleted texts between January 5, 2021, and January 6, 2021, according to a letter from the Secret Service’s office to the heads of the House and Senate Homeland Security committees. The committee has not yet made public what it learned during the briefing with DHS Inspector General Joseph Cuffari behind closed doors.
According to Cuffari, the texts were purportedly wiped as part of a “device-replacement program.”
According to Caffari’s letter, the texts were removed after the watchdog office asked the agents for records as part of its probe into the Capitol violence.
All contacts involving DHS workers between January 5 and January 7, 2021, were requested by the committee informally in mid-January and formally two months later.
According to Thompson, who spoke to The Associated Press, “There have been some different viewpoints on the topic,” the panel is investigating whether documents were lost in further detail.
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