WASHINGTON (AP) — Top Democrats in Congress are demanding that the Department of Homeland Security’s inspector general turn over information on deleted Secret Service text messages related to the Jan. 6, 2012, attack on Capitol Hill, accusing him of using delaying tactics to obstruct your investigation. .
In a letter published Tuesday, leaders of the House Oversight and Homeland Security committees said they are willing to subpoena Inspector General Joseph Cuffari if he doesn’t comply with their requests.
Lawmakers are pressing for Cuffari to provide records and testimony about alleged efforts to cover up the deleted Secret Service communication related to Jan. 6 attack. They also want Cuffari to recuse himself from the department’s internal investigation into the handling of the texts.
“His obstruction of committee investigations is unacceptable, and his justifications for this failure appear to reflect a fundamental misunderstanding of Congress’s authority and its duties as inspector general,” House Oversight Chairwoman Wrote the letter. Carolyn Maloney, and Homeland Security Chairman Bennie Thompson. .
“If you continue to refuse to comply with our requests, we will have no choice but to consider alternative measures to ensure your compliance,” they wrote.
The renewed request comes a week after Cuffari told the committee he would seek a legal opinion before providing internal documents about his office’s ongoing investigation or making his staff available for transcribed interviews with lawmakers.
“Sharing information about ongoing criminal investigations could affect potential witnesses or others who may be involved in the investigative process,” Cuffari wrote in an Aug. 8 letter to the two committees. “To protect the integrity of our work and preserve our independence, we do not share information about ongoing matters, such as information you requested in your letters.”
It’s just the latest back-and-forth about texting since mid-July, when Cuffari sent a letter to Congress revealing that Secret Service text messages sent and received around January 6, 2021, were deleted despite requests from Congress and federal investigators. that they be preserved
Since then, the two House committees say they have obtained evidence showing the inspector general’s office first became aware of the missing Secret Service text messages as part of their investigation into the attack on the US Capitol in May 2021. They say emails between top Homeland Security IG officials show the agency, which oversees the Secret Service, decided to abandon efforts to retrieve those text messages in July 2021, almost a year before they first reported to Congress that they were deleted.
Lawmakers want answers about why surveillance officials chose “not to seek critical information from the Secret Service at this point in this investigation,” choosing only to renew their request to DHS for certain text messages more than four months later, in December 2021.
The deletion of the messages has raised the possibility of losing evidence that could shed more light on then-President Donald Trump’s actions during the insurrection, particularly after testimony about his run-in with security while trying to join supporters on Capitol Hill. . There are now two congressional investigations into the handling of those communications by the Secret Service and DHS.
The missing texts are also at the center of the House committee investigating the Jan. 6 attack, of which Thompson is the chairman.
Since then, the Secret Service has turned over a host of records and documents to the committee investigating the Capitol insurrection, but only one text message between agents the day before the attack and when a mob of rioters stormed the Capitol building on January 6th.
The Secret Service has insisted that proper procedures were followed. Agency spokesman Anthony Guglielmi said last month that “the suggestion that the Secret Service maliciously deleted the text messages following a request is false.”
Maloney and Thompson told Cuffari that his “failure to comply with our pending applications is without legal justification and is unacceptable.”
They gave his office until Aug. 23 to provide “all response documents” and make staff available for interviews before lawmakers issue a congressional subpoena.
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