The phones were obtained “shortly after” the office of Department of Homeland Security Inspector General Joseph Cuffari (pictured), a Trump-appointed official, informed the Secret Service that there would be a criminal investigation into the deleted text messages dated Jan. 5 and 6 of the agency, according to NBC News
The Secret Service confiscated the phones of two dozen agents involved in responding to last year’s attack on the US Capitol, a new report claimed Tuesday.
They were turned over to the Department of Homeland Security’s inspector general’s office, people familiar with the matter told NBC News.
Inspector General Joseph Cuffari, a Trump-appointed staffer, informed the Secret Service in July that he was launching a criminal investigation into missing text messages from January 5 and 6 last year.
Messages that may have been of interest to several investigations into the Jan. 6 riots — including the high-profile House Select Committee investigation — had been deleted after Cuffari’s office requested it, according to a letter he sent to relevant officials House and Senate committees sent.
Days later, on July 19, Cuffari’s deputy asked the agency to halt “further investigative activities to collect and secure the evidence” in the texts.
The 24 phones were reportedly handed over to the watchdog’s office “shortly after”.
A Secret Service spokesman referred to the inspector general’s office for questions about the items, including the phones.
“The work investigating the travesty of the January 6 insurgency is extremely important to us and is consistent with the intelligence agency’s mission, which is to protect our nation’s top leaders,” the spokesman told .
“We have and will continue to cooperate fully with any oversight effort and we have provided everything that has been requested as part of these investigations.”
A spokesman for the Office of the Inspector General of DHS told : “In order to protect the integrity of our work, maintain our independence, and in accordance with federal guidelines, the DHS OIG does not confirm or comment on the existence of criminal investigations.”
The intelligence agency’s texts are being sought in connection with investigations into how the January 6 attack on the US Capitol unfolded
According to Tuesday’s NBC report, some agents were unhappy that their leaders acted unilaterally to confiscate the phones.
The Secret Service had publicly dismissed the inspector general’s suggestion that text messages were intentionally deleted after his office requested them.
The agency claimed that the deletion of messages was due to a regularly scheduled update that wiped almost all of the phones’ existing data. She claimed that the change was already underway when the lyrics were requested.
Cuffari himself was accused of improperly interfering in the investigation.
CNN previously reported that it knew the Secret Service deleted the messages in May 2021 and told DHS it stopped checking for them as of July of that year.
Earlier this year, top lawmakers from the January 6 Committee and the House Oversight Committee wrote a letter accusing Cuffari of obstructing their investigations – which they called “unacceptable”.
“If you continue to refuse to comply with our demands, we have no choice but to consider alternative measures to ensure your compliance,” Democrats Bennie Thompson and Carolyn Maloney wrote in August.
Interest in Secret Service text messages stems largely from the bombshell testimony made by former White House staffer Cassidy Hutchinson during one of the committee’s last summer hearings on Jan. 6.
Public scrutiny tightened after former White House staffer Cassidy Hutchinson claimed she was told Trump pounced on his Secret Service security detail on Jan. 6 last year when they refused to release him with his supporters drive to the US Capitol
Hutchinson testified that she was told the ex-president threw himself on the steering wheel of his escort vehicle and then on an agent’s neck when they refused to take him and his supporters to the US Capitol.
She was reportedly told that Trump raged about his intelligence security: “I’m the friggin’ President. Now take me up to the Capitol.’
Trump has denied the allegations.
The January 6 committee is holding another hearing on September 28, likely its last.
Republican Rep. Liz Cheney, the panel’s vice chair, said over the weekend that lawmakers had received about 800,000 pages worth of communications from the Secret Service.
However, the text messages we are looking for from January 5th and January 6th have largely disappeared.
“The lyrics themselves are gone in a lot of cases, or other forms of communication, like team messages and emails, and other forms of communication that we probably got about 800,000 pages,” Cheney said at the Texas Tribune Festival.