6 Jan. committee summons secret service, looking for texts from January 5-6, #jan #committee #subpoena #secret #service #searching OLASMEDIA TV NEWSThis is what we have for you today:
The House select committee investigating the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol has subpoenaed the U.S. Secret Service to receive text messages from around the time of the attack, the committee said Friday night.
The subpoena comes two days after the Inspector General of the Department of Homeland Security told lawmakers that the Secret Service had erased text messages dated January 5 and 6, 2021. In a letter to congressional committees, Inspector General Joseph Cuffari said his office had been notified that texts were being erased as part of a “device replacement program.” But Cuffari told lawmakers the takedowns came after he requested the messages as part of an investigation into the agency’s response to the Capitol attack.
The Secret Service has denied that it maliciously deleted the messages, saying instead that some data was lost during a pre-planned system migration.
In a letter to the Secret Service, the chair of the selected committee, Rep. Bennie Thompson, January 6 that the commission has spent months trying to obtain documents from parts of the Department of Homeland Security relating to the events of January 5-7.
He acknowledged that the committee had been informed that the erased text messages were part of a “device replacement program”.
However, Thompson pointed out that the Secret Service said in a July 14 statement that while the “three-month pre-planned system migration” resulted in some data being lost, “none of the texts [DHS Office of Inspector General] sought was lost in migration.”
“Accordingly, the Select Committee is seeking out the relevant text messages, as well as any post-action reports issued in all departments of the USSS that relate in any way to or relate to the events of January 6, 2021,” the letter said. . .
The letter requested that the information be provided by 19 July.
Thompson’s letter comes hours after Cuffari briefed members of the committee on Jan. 6 about the erasure of text messages. Thompson told reporters after the briefing that members “wanted to get the IG’s perspective on what he thought was going on.”
He said the commission was still interested in getting the texts and would contact the Secret Service.
“Communications within the Secret Service, which protected the president and vice president at the critical juncture on Jan. 6 when the violence erupted, is of the utmost importance to the committee,” another panel member, Rep. Elaine Luria, said.
On Thursday, US Secret Service spokesman Steve Kopek called “false” the insinuation that the Secret Service maliciously deleted text messages in response to the DHS Inspector General’s request. He said the agency “has been fully cooperating with the OIG in every way — be it interviews, documents, emails or texts.”
Kopek said that in January 2021, before the Inspector General’s investigation began, the Secret Service “started restoring its cell phones to factory settings as part of a three-month pre-planned system migration.”
“During that process, data was lost on some phones,” he said.
The agency said on Thursday that the Secret Service passed 786,176 unedited emails and 7,678 Microsoft Teams chat messages to the DHS Inspector General, all citing conversations and operational details related to Jan. 6 and the preparations involved. led. Those messages included text messages from the United States Capitol Police to the head of the Secret Service’s Uniformed Division requesting emergency assistance at the Capitol.
Ellis Kim contributed to the reporting.
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