The agency gives US Intelligence until Tuesday to deliver the text communications of January 5 and 6, 2021, keys to determining Trump’s involvement in the attack
The head of the January 6 committee, Bennie Thompson, who investigates the assault on the US Capitol in the House of Representatives, has sent a letter to the director of the Secret Service, James Murray, to inform him of a summons that forces this agency to deliver missing text messages from the days surrounding the riots by Tuesday. The communications could be key to determining Donald Trump’s involvement in what happened since members of Intelligence were on the day of the attack with the former president as well as with Vice President Mike Pence, who hid in Congress after the mob asked that they hang him
“The Select Committee is seeking the relevant text messages as well as any after-action reports that have been issued in any and all divisions of the USSS (United States Secret Service) that pertain to or relate in any way to the events of January 6, 2021,” says the letter, published on the committee’s website late on Friday (early Saturday morning in Spain).
Department of Homeland Security (DHS) Inspector General Joseph Cuffari told Congress earlier this week that his office had had difficulty obtaining Secret Service text message records from January 5 and 6, 2021. It was then when alarm bells went off around the secret services, which had already been criticized for failing to adequately anticipate the threat of violent action by armed Trump supporters.
On June 29, in addition, a former White House employee told the January 6, 2021 House investigation that Trump had tried to force the secret service to take him to Capitol Hill to join his supporters.
According to intelligence spokesman Anthony Guglielmi, the agents’ phones were wiped as part of a planned replacement program that began before the DHS Office of Inspector General requested the information six weeks after the insurrection.
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