The Secret Service seized the cellphones of 24 agents who were involved in the response to last year’s Capitol riot and delivered them to the Department of Homeland Security’s inspector general this summer, a new report says.
The phones were handed over to DHS watchdog Joseph Cuffari around the time his office launched a probe into missing text messages from the agents’ work-issued phones in July, sources told NBC News.
Some of the agents were reportedly upset the Secret Service had taken the devices without their input, the sources added.
It isn’t clear what, if any, information has been obtained by investigators from the phones.
Cuffari, who is investigating how the Secret Service responded to the violence on Jan. 6, 2021, had notified lawmakers in July that messages sent the day before and the day of the riot appeared to have been erased from the phones.
His office said the messages were erased after DHS officials had requested more than a month’s worth of communication records from the agents.
The Secret Service said the messages were wiped as part of a pre-planned systems upgrade that resorted the devices to their factory settings.
But other reports indicated that Congress had instructed the agency to preserve and produce records related to the riot on Jan. 16, 2021, and again on Jan. 25, 2021 — two days before the data migration began.
So far, the agency has turned over to investigators just one text exchange from the 24 personnel. That exchange was between then-US Capitol Police Chief Steven Sund and then-Secret Service Uniformed Division Chief Thomas Sullivan and took place the day of the riot.
The contents of the missing messages attracted renewed scrutiny in June when former White House aide Cassidy Hutchinson testified to the House select committee investigating the riot that she had heard that Donald Trump had lunged at a Secret Service driver when he refused to take the 45th president to his supporters at the Capitol.
Trump has denied that he made any such move.
Meanwhile, the revelation that Cuffari had access to the agents’ phone since around July has raised questions about his ongoing probe into the missing texts.
The inspector general has already faced calls to recuse himself from the probe after Democratic leaders of the House Homeland Security and Oversight committees accused him of “lack of transparency and independence.”
Reps. Carolyn Maloney (D-NY) and Bennie Thompson (D-Miss.) — who also leads the House select committee investigating the riot — alleged in August that the watchdog’s office may have stopped looking for the texts last year.
