Secret Service erased texts from Jan. 5 and 6, 2021, official says
“The Department [of Homeland Security] notified us that many U.S. Secret Service (USSS) text messages, from January 5 and 6, 2021 were erased as part of a device-replacement program,” wrote department Office of Inspector General Joseph V. Cuffari to the Committee on Jan. 6.
Cuffari emphasized that the erasures came “after” the Office of
Inspector General requested copies of the text messages for its own
investigation, and signaled that they were part of a pattern of DHS
resistance to his inquiries. Staff members are required by law to
surrender records so that he can audit the sprawling national security
agency, but he said they have “repeatedly” refused to provide them until
an attorney reviews them.
...
Updated 11:37 p.m. to include the following two paragraphs which were not in WaPo's article which based this post at 10:24 p.m.
Secret Service spokesman Anthony Guglielmi said Thursday...
“First, in January 2021, before any inspection was opened by OIG on this subject, USSS began to reset its mobile phones to factory settings as part of a pre-planned, three-month system migration. In that process, data resident on some phones was lost,” he said. “DHS OIG requested electronic communications for the first time on Feb. 26, 2021, after the migration was well under way. The Secret Service notified DHS OIG of the loss of certain phones’ data, but confirmed to OIG that none of the texts it was seeking had been lost in the migration.”
So when did they get fucking lost!
If true, this completely undercuts this story? "NONE" of the texts from Jan. 5/6 "had been lost." "NONE HAD BEEN LOST." Is. That. True.?
...
Cuffari, nominated by Trump in 2019 and confirmed by the Senate, has faced significant criticism since he took over the office. His first-year audits plummeted to historic lows, he clashed with Immigration and Customs Enforcement over the veracity of an inspection of a detention center, and he blocked investigations into the Secret Service’s handling of George Floyd protests in Lafayette Square and the spread of the coronavirus in its ranks, documents show.
The OIG’s office is under investigation by the Council of the Inspectors General on Integrity and Efficiency (CIGIE), an independent entity in the executive branch, for undisclosed allegations of misconduct, according to an internal email circulated to the office in January.
The nonprofit Project On Government Oversight (POGO), an independent watchdog, has called on President Biden to remove Cuffari.
...
A person briefed on the Secret Service’s reaction to Cuffari’s letter said the agency rejects his characterizations that they eliminated or deleted records after Cuffari’s office requested them. ...,
According to two people briefed on the documents request, the Secret
Service began a long preplanned, agencywide replacement of staff
telephones to improve communication across the agency in January 2021.
Oh yeah, right! Pre-planned as early as Nov. 4, 2020!
...
Most of the replacement program began with staff in Washington offices, and if they did not back up their old text messages, the people said, the information from Jan. 6 and the days before that is lost. That could conceivably include the texts sent and received by former White House deputy chief of staff Tony Ornato and former Trump security detail leader Bobby Engel and other senior leaders in the Secret Service.
Wait a minute. The replacement program began in the month of January; D.C. staff got their new phones first; Why is January 5 the "lost" date for Ornato and Engel? Let's say Ornato and Engel got their new phones on Jan. 3: the data on their own phones up to and including the 3rd would be lost but Jan. 5 and 6 data should be on their new phones. What if Ornato and Engel got their new phones on Jan. 8. Then everything up to the 8th would be lost. As far as I can see the only way the start date for data loss would be precisely Jan. 5 is if 1) Ornato and Engel got their new phones on Jan. 7, and 2) they didn't backup their old phones' data from Jan. 5 and 6. This is too precious, Secret Service has sliced this too thin for credibility. In addition, you telling me Secret Service agents are not required to back up or otherwise preserve their cellular data when they get new devices when they knew there were audits coming?!
The Secret Service has a policy requiring employees to back up and store government communications when they retire old electronic or telephonic devices, but in practice, staff do not consistently back up texts from phones.
Is it a policy or a fucking law Chief WaPo?!
Why isn't that enforced? And you're telling me that these two Secret Service agents, Ornato and Engel, with Trump on Jan. 5 when a coup d'etat against the United States government was in the final stage of planning, and on Jan. 6 when the coup was executed, did not back up their own phones? Where are the old phones? Did they surrender them to Secret Service admin.? This is BULLSHIT.
A similar issue came up in 2018, when the Justice Department inspector general said he used “forensic tools” to recover missing text messages from two senior FBI officials who had investigated Hillary Clinton and Trump and exchanged notes critical of the president. The missing messages generated criticism when GOP leaders and the president questioned how the FBI failed to preserve them.
I thought that was the case. I have been told in my criminal law practice that you can never really delete a single key stroke that you make in text messages. Unless Ornato's and Engel's phones have some super-secret Secret Service erasure capability the Jan. 5, 6 messages can be recovered.