- The Secret Service reportedly can't recover the deleted text messages agents sent on January 6, 2021.
- According to The Washington Post, the agency is prepared to say it has nothing new to offer.
- The House January 6 committee previously subpoenaed the Secret Service's records.
The Secret Service can't access deleted text messages from January 6, 2021, signaling the loss of vital records about what was happening as the attack on the Capitol unfolded, The Washington Post reports.
The Post cites an unnamed senior official who was briefed on the matter as the source of the confirmation that the agency cannot access records that the House January 6 committee had previously subpoenaed.
"The agency, which made this determination after reviewing its communication databases over the past four days, will provide thousands of records, but nearly all of them have been shared previously with an agency watchdog and congressional committees, the senior official said," The Post's Carol D. Leonnig and Maria Sacchetti report.
A spokesperson for the Secret Service did not respond to a request for comment.
The National Archives, which oversees federal records, demanded that the Secret Service look into the matter earlier Tuesday. A top archives official also required that the agency filed a report within 30 days about why documents were deleted.
"This report must include a complete description of the records affected, a statement of the exact circumstances surrounding the deletion of messages, a statement of the safeguards established to prevent further loss of documentation, and details of all agency actions taken to salvage, retrieve, or reconstruct the records," Laurence Brewer, chief records officer for the federal government, wrote in a letter to the Secret Service.
Anthony Guglielmi, a Secret Service spokesperson, responded on Twitter that the Archives would have their "full cooperation" with the review.
The Department of Homeland Security Inspector General previously told lawmakers that messages were erased after the watchdog requested access to them. A Secret Service spokesperson responded at the time that "the insinuation" the agency deleted records after receiving a request was "false."
Multiple Secret Service agents had an up-close view of key moments on January 6.
According to former Trump White House aide Cassidy Hutchinson, it was a Secret Service agent that defied then-President Donald Trump's order to take him to the Capitol as lawmakers began to formally certify the election. (Trump has denied that he violently lashed out in response.) A top aide to then-Vice President Mike Pence said a different agent instructed the vice president, who had been whisked away to a secure location within the Capitol, to get into his armored vehicle as rioters began to swarm the building.
It is also likely that agents would have observed or overheard key meetings that formed the scheme of Trump's effort to overturn the 2020 election, including a December Oval Office meeting that turned into a shouting match between White House lawyers and Trump's personal attorneys.
The Secret Service has been historically reticent to allow agents to cooperate with investigations that would require revealing intimate details about the president. But in the late 1990s, a federal judge rejected the agency's effort to block the testimony of agents on then-President Bill Clinton's detail.
Their testimony made it clear that Clinton had misled investigators about his relationship with White House intern Monica Lewinsky, an episode that led to his impeachment.