Secret Service was Warned to Retain Text Messages Before J6
As details continue to pour in regarding the Secret Service’s deletion of text messages on the days surrounding January 6th, 2021, Americans are growing concerned about a potential cover-up by the elite law enforcement agency.
The controversy arrives as the select committee investigating the events of that fateful day discovered that the agency had deleted text messages from both the 5th and 6th of January, after subpoenaing the Secret Service for those records. This is a rather significant breach of protocol normally, made all the worse by warnings the agency received prior to the attempted insurrection.
A senior Secret Service official said agency employees received two emails — at least one prior to Jan. 6, 2021 — reminding them to preserve records on their cellphones, including text messages, before their devices were essentially “restored to factory settings” and texts were lost as part of a planned reset and replacement program across the agency.
Advertisement - story continues belowLast week the special House committee investigating the Jan. 6, 2021, Capitol riot issued a subpoena for text messages by the Secret Service on Jan. 5 and Jan. 6, 2021. A source familiar with the matter told NBC News on Tuesday that the Secret Service does not have any additional text messages to hand over.
The first email about preserving records came in December 2020 from the Secret Service’s Office of Strategic Planning and the second was in January 2021 from the agency’s chief information officer, though the source didn’t provide exact dates. Both emails included reminders that federal employees have the responsibility to preserve their records and included instructions on how to do so, the senior Secret Service official said.
The revelation had many conspiracy theorists on Twitter suggesting that the agency was involved in some sort of nefarious cover-up, but no such evidence has yet emerged on that front.
