January 6 panel examines whether erased Secret Service texts can be revived

The House committee investigating the Capitol attack is examining whether Secret Service text messages from 5 and 6 January 2021 that were erased around the time of an internal review can be reconstructed, according to sources familiar with the matter.

The committee is now examining whether the Department of Homeland Security inspector general, the watchdog for the Secret Service which disclosed the erasure in a letter to Congress, can use forensic tools to reconstruct the messages, the sources said.

The texts are potentially significant for January 6 investigators as the Secret Service played a crucial role in preventing Donald Trump from going to the Capitol on that day, and according to the panel, wanted to remove then-vice president Mike Pence from the complex.

January 6 investigators believe that the texts from the day of the Capitol attack could shed light on how the Secret Service wanted to move Donald Trump and Mike Pence, while texts from the day before could provide greater clarity on how security plans developed, the sources said.

On the day of the Capitol attack, according to testimony by the former White House aide Cassidy Hutchinson, the Secret Service played a major part in stopping Trump going to the Capitol by driving back to the West Wing after his speech at the Ellipse.

But the committee is understood to have asked the DHS inspector general, Joseph Cuffari, on Friday morning if the texts can be reconstructed using forensic tools available to federal law enforcement.

The meeting with Cuffari came after the committee chairman, Bennie Thompson, met his staff director, David Buckley, and deputy staff director, Kristin Amerling, before convening the full committee which decided to call Cuffari, the sources said.

In the letter to Congress, reviewed by the Guardian, Cuffari said the erasure of the text messages appeared to come after his office requested the communications as part of an internal review into the Secret Service response to the Capitol attack.

The Secret Service has pushed back at that characterization, saying the texts were lost during a pre-planned, agency-wide cellphone upgrade scheme in January 2021 because some agents apparently had not backed up messages as required.

By the time Cuffari requested internal agency communications, memorandums, emails and telephonic records such as text messages, according to a person familiar with the matter, around a third of personnel had been given new phones.