Timeline: How Missing Secret Service Text Messages Became a Political Scandal #Timeline #missing #Secret #Service #text #messages #political #scandal Welcome to OLASMEDIA TV NEWSThis is what we have for you today:
But the issue surrounding the possible loss of text messages dates back to more than a year earlier, as the Secret Service and the watchdog went back and forth over the data loss several times. As CNN reported Friday, Cuffari’s office was aware of the missing texts as early as May 2021, months earlier than previously known.
Here’s a timeline of how the Secret Service text messages became one of the top questions for the House committee as it prepares for the next phase of its investigation into the January 6, 2021 attack on the US Capitol. .
January 16, 2021: Ten Days After the Capitol Uprising, Four House Committees send a letter to Homeland Security and other relevant agencies instructing them to retain data relating to January 6.
It is still unclear whether the secret service has received the guidance. A source familiar with the investigation told CNN that the Secret Service tried to find it last week but could not.
January 25, 2021: The Secret Service “instructed employees on how to save content on their phones,” sending a reminder to employees that a pre-planned data migration would wipe their phones, according to a letter The Secret Service sent to the House selection committee on July 19, 2022. The Secret Service’s internal message made it clear that only employees were responsible for holding data that had to be kept by law.
January 27, 2021: The Microsoft Intune phone migration begins, according to the agency’s July 19 letter to the House selection committee.
February 26, 2021: DHS Inspector General Joseph Cuffari is requesting Secret Service electronic communications for the first time, spokesman Anthony Guglielmi said. “DHS OIG first requested electronic communications on February 26, 2021, after the migration got underway. The Secret Service notified DHS of the loss of data from certain phones, but confirmed to OIG that none of the texts sought were lost during the migration,” Guglielmi said in a July 14, 2022 statement.
March 25, 2021: House committee chairmen send letters to the White House and numerous federal agencies seeking documents and communications related to the Jan. 6 attack. One of the agencies that receive a letter is the Department of Homeland Security, which oversees the Secret Service.
April 1, 2021: According to the letter from the agency, the Intune migration is complete.
May 2021: According to sources, the Secret Service is notifying the DHS Inspector General of missing text messages related to the phone data migration issue. The office tells Cuffari’s office attempted to contact the Secret Service with a mobile operator to retrieve the texts when they realized they were lost, a source told CNN.
Key personnel at the Secret Service mistakenly believed the data had been backed up and only realized it was permanently lost after the data migration was complete, the source said.
June 11, 2021: The DHS Inspector General requests text messages “sent or received by 24 Secret Service personnel during the period from December 7, 2020 to January 8, 2021.” CNN has previously reported that Trump and Pence’s security chiefs are among the 24 individuals.
The Secret Service responded to the request by sending a single text message. That message was from former U.S. Capitol Police Chief Steven Sund to Thomas Sullivan, former head of the Secret Service’s uniformed intelligence agency, who asked for help on Jan. 6.
July 2021: A DHS Deputy Inspector General tells DHS that the Inspector General’s office is no longer looking for Secret Service text messages, according to two sources.
Dec 2021: DHS Inspector General reopens investigation into Secret Service text messages. According to the letter sent last week by Carolyn Maloney, Speaker of House Oversight and Chair of Homeland Security, Bennie Thompson, calling on Cuffari to withdraw from the investigation, the Secret Service Inspector General’s office was told that text messages were deleted. A DHS source said that CNN Cuffari’s office had been notified again of the data loss.
January 28, 2022: The Office of the Inspector General of DHS is notifying its staff of an investigation into the DHS Inspector General that is being led by the Board of Inspectors General for Integrity and Efficiency, the umbrella group of Inspectors General. The investigation is linked to allegations of retaliation after an independent assessment of office culture.February 2022: According to a DHS source, the Secret Service is notifying the DHS Inspector General of the data migration issue for the third time.
According to early February coverage of the Washington Post, Cuffari’s office staff planned to contact all DHS agencies that offered data specialists to retrieve messages from their phones. But later that month, the Post reports that Cuffari’s office decided not to collect or review phones from desks.
According to the Washington Post, Cuffari learned in late February that text messages to the two top DHS officials under the Trump administration were missing and that they were lost resetting their government phones when they quit their jobs in January 2021.
June 28, 2022: Cassidy Hutchinson, former Trump White House aide, testifies before the House selection committee. She says she was told of a heated altercation between former President Donald Trump and his Secret Service after Trump was told he could not travel to the Capitol on Jan. 6. The testimony raises new questions about the Secret Service’s behavior on January 6.July 14, 2022: Cuffari writes in a letter to the House and Senate Homeland Security Committees that the Department of Homeland Security has notified his office that “many U.S. Secret Service text messages dated January 5 and 6, 2021 have been deleted as part of of a device replacement program.” July 15, 2022: The office of the Inspector General informs the House Committee about the texts of the secret service. The same day, the select committee issues a subpoena for records related to January 6. July 19, 2022: The Secret Service responds to the House’s selected committee by providing thousands of records. “Our delivery included thousands of pages of documents, Secret Service cell phone use and other policies, as well as operational and planning data,” Guglielmi said in a statement. The agency also said it was still taking steps to recover text messages, write in a letter to the committee that it looked at metadata to determine what messages may have been sent and interviewed the 24 Secret Service employees involved.
Also on July 19, the National Archives sent a letter to DHS demanding a report documenting any inappropriate deletion of text messages.
July 20, 2022: DHS Deputy Inspector General Gladys Ayala writes to Secret Service that the Inspector General’s office is investigating the circumstances surrounding the potentially deleted texts as part of an ongoing criminal investigation, as first reported by CNN. In the letter, the Inspector General’s office orders the Secret Service to halt its own investigation and writes that doing so could disrupt the criminal investigation. Before that letter was sent, the Secret Service had identified metadata indicating that around January 6, 2021, text messages had been sent or received on the phones of 10 of the Secret Service’s 24 employees, and the agency was trying to determine whether these were relevant. contain information that has survived, CNN reported.July 26, 2022: Thompson and Maloney ask Cuffari to turn the investigation into the text messages over to another inspector general, as they question his ability to conduct the investigation. Lawmakers wrote in a letter to Cuffari that his failure to notify Congress in a timely manner about the missing texts “raises serious doubts about his independence and his ability to conduct such an important investigation effectively.”
July 28, 2022: Senate Judiciary Chairman Dick Durbin, an Illinois Democrat, called out Attorney General Merrick Garland to investigate missing messages leading up to Jan. 6. The Justice Department did not respond to a request for comment.