Is the Secret Service Hiding Something?

Jewel Samad / AFP via Getty Images

Events late last week and over the weekend have entangled the U.S. Secret Service (USSS) even further into the January 6 investigation. Two key moments on January 6, 2021 had already linked Trump’s former security detail to events at the heart of the investigation. The first, per testimony by Cassidy Hutchinson, was that Trump allegedly lunged at the steering wheel of his motorcade car and attacked his driver when he wasn’t permitted by his USSS detail to travel to the Capitol to meet up with the mob as he had wanted. The second, hinted at by Rep. Jamie Raskin (MD-D) of the Committee, was that then-Vice President Pence had refused to get into the car with his USSS detail, perhaps out of fear he would not be permitted to return to complete the counting of the electoral ballots.

These moments are shrouded in mystery, and there are competing narratives around them. We might know more about them if we had the text communications of the agents who were present at these two moments. And here’s where something now feels off: the USSS apparently has deleted text messages of its agents, including those from January 5 and January 6, that might shed light on what occurred.

As reported by The Intercept, the inspector general for the Department of Homeland Security, Joseph Cuffari, informed Congress of the text deletions last week via a letter dated Thursday, July 13, 2022. In it he relayed that DHS had notified his office that “many” USSS text messages, from January 5 and January 6, 2021, had been erased “as part of a device-replacement program” —meaning, presumably, replaced cell phones. Cuffari noted, however, that those messages were deleted after the Inspector General had requested records from the USSS as part of its evaluation of the attack on the Capitol. 

DHS allegedly also had stonewalled his office and the investigation. “DHS personnel have repeatedly told OIG that they were not permitted to provide records directly to OIG and that such records had to first undergo review by DHS attorneys,” Cuffari wrote to the Committee. “This review led to weeks-long delays in OIG obtaining records and created confusion over whether all records had been produced.”

The letter raised eyebrows among Committee members. “You can imagine how shocked we were to get the letter from the inspector general saying that he had been trying to get this information and that they had, in fact, been deleted after he’d asked for them,” said Rep. Zoe Lofgren (D-CA).

The USSS responded to the letter indignantly in a statement of its own, saying that the “insinuation that the Secret Service maliciously deleted text messages following a request is false.” It claimed that in January 2021 the Service began to “reset its mobile phones to factory settings as part of a pre-planned, three-month system migration.” It was during that process, the Chief of Communications for the USSS claimed, that “data resident on some phones was lost.” The statement implied that no texts the OIG sought were actually lost for good, while noted that the OIG “requested electronic communications for the first time on Feb. 26, 2021, after the migration was well under way.”

This was a strange flex and partial dodge, given that the entire DHS, including the USSS of which it is a part, already was put on notice by the House Intelligence Committee, in a letter dated January 16, 2021, that it needed to produce documents relevant to January 6. It certainly is curious that after receiving this letter, the Department nevertheless would proceed with a “system migration” in which any data about an event as important as the January 6 attack would be “lost” and no longer “resident on some phones” of key Secret Service personnel.

Per reporting by The Guardian, in a briefing before the Committee last Friday, July 15, the inspector general for DHS further revealed that the USSS’s story curiously has shifted. At one point, he told the Committee, the Service’s explanation for the missing texts was because of “software upgrades,” while its newest claim is that it was because of “device replacements.” That inconsistency and the rest of his briefing so alarmed the Committee that it immediately issued a subpoena to the USSS demanding that the missing texts be produced by Tuesday, two days before the scheduled final hearing of the Committee.

The politicization of the USSS became a point of tension under Trump, and now it has blown up into a full controversy. Tony Ornato, a loyalist whom Trump liked so much that he named him Deputy White House Chief of Staff, was also a high-ranking and paid official of the USSS, breaking with long standing precedent of not having agents enter into civilian roles. Ornato was a witness to many of the events on January 6. Yet he allegedly disputes Cassidy Hutchinson’s critical testimony that Ornato had told her about the former president lunging for the steering while of the car and attacking his secret service lead agent, even though that story reportedly has been corroborated by another witness. The text messages from that day might shed light on whose version of events is true were they able to be retrieved.

Even more important might be any contemporaneous texts relating to efforts to whisk Mike Pence away from the Capitol before he finished his constitutional duty to count the votes. Pence had been curiously adamant that he was not going to get into the vehicle that was offered to him. He was certainly right to mistrust any Trump loyalists within the Secret Service, especially given what we now know about Trump’s belief that Pence deserved the mob’s chants to hang him. 

The missing texts may arrive in time on Tuesday, or they may wind up further delayed or mysteriously lost forever, we shall have to see. But one thing already is clear: The incident has resulted in serious further damage to the USSS’s reputation and credibility, and it will take time and effort to rebuild trust.