A U.S. Secret Service officer near the White House on November 8, 2020.
J. Scott Applewhite/AP
The Jan. 6 panel subpoenaed Secret Service for messages sent around the day of the Capitol attack.
A “systems migration process” that occurred three weeks after the riot may have deleted all data, per letter from Jan. 6 panel chairs.
The agency could have violated the Federal Records Act, the letter said.
The Secret Service may have violated a federal law stipulating rules on record keeping by undergoing a process that deleted communications between the agency around the day of the January 6 Capitol riot, according to a Wednesday press release from the two chairs of the House select committee investigating the attack.
“The procedure for preserving content prior to this purge appears to have been contrary to federal records retention requirements and may represent a possible violation of the Federal Records Act,” a letter from Reps. Bennie Thompson and Liz Cheney said.
The Federal Records Act of 1950 outlines rules for employees of federal agencies on what information qualifies as a federal record and which ones are to be collected, retained, destroyed, or permanently archived.
The letter from the January 6 panel chairs also reveals a “system migration process,” that the Secret Service previously said resulted in lost data, had occurred just three weeks after the riot.
“The US Secret Service system migration process went forward on January 27, 2021, just three weeks after the attack on the Capitol in which the Vice President of the United States, while under the protection of the Secret Service, was steps from a violent mob hunting for him,” the letter said.
The January 6 panel subpoenaed the Secret Service on July 15 to retrieve communications data from the agency after the Department of Homeland Security said that messages from agents’ phones on January 5 and January 6, 2021, were deleted.
The Secret Service previously said that a “pre-planned, three-month system migration” resulted in lost data, according to a letter from Thompson.
So far, the committee had received one text message from the agency.
“The January 6th Committee’s work is of paramount importance and they will continue to have the highest level of cooperation and support from the Secret Service as they have had from the beginning,” Anthony Guglielmi, communications chief for the Secret Service, wrote in an email to Insider. Guglielmi did not directly address the allegation that the agency may have violated federal law.
Interest in messages between the Secret Service around the day of the riot comes after a bombshell testimony from a White House aide, Cassidy Hutchinson, where she testified that she heard that former President Donald Trump lunged at his security detail as he demanded to be taken back to the Capitol.