The House committee investigating the U.S. Capitol assault has received additional material from the Secret Service in response to a subpoena, but members aren’t saying whether it sheds new light on missing agency text messages.
Representative Zoe Lofgren, a Democrat, on Wednesday described some of the records as “relevant” and worthwhile to the panel’s ongoing probe of the Jan. 6, 2021 insurrection.
But neither Lofgren nor another person familiar with the development would say if the records pertain to erased Secret Service text messages or whether they confirm disputed testimony by a former White House aide.
“I can’t get into any of that,” Lofgren said.
A request for comment to the Secret Service press office was not immediately answered.
The Secret Service has been in the spotlight since former White House aide Cassidy Hutchinson testified that she was told the day of the insurrection that Trump exploded at Secret Service agents who refused to take him from a rally near the White House to the Capitol to join protesters.
Hutchinson said she was even told Trump lunged for the steering wheel of his armored vehicle.
The committee also was digging into security concerns surrounding then-Vice President Mike Pence, who had gone to the Capitol to preside over the Electoral College certification of Joe Biden’s victory in the 2020 election. There was testimony that Pence disagreed with the Secret Service agents on the scene to get into his armored vehicle during the attack, fearing he’d be spirited away.
That raised questions about whether removing Pence might have figured in plans to interfere with the certification of Joe Biden’s victory and, more generally, whether Trump may have somehow co-opted the agency.
But as the committee was seeking more details, committee Chairman Bennie Thompson announced in July it was subpoenaing the Secret Service for records upon learning some agency text messages from Jan. 5 and 6 were allegedly missing. Included in the subpoena were demands not only for texts and other data, but also “any after-action reports” issued “pertaining or relating in any way to the events of Jan. 6, 2021.”
In fact, the service acknowledged that some texts of 24 of its employees from Jan. 5 and 6, 2021 were erased despite federal laws requiring they be kept, but says it was an accident that occurred during a shift to new mobile phones. That occurred, despite at least two prior demands from Congress that it preserve material related to the attack.
An agency spokesman vehemently denied the missing texts had been deliberately erased. But the matter spawned calls for multiple investigations.
On Wednesday, Lofgren would not say when asked if the new material since obtained from the Secret Service by the committee under subpoena includes added information on Trump’s alleged exploding at Secret Service agents who refused to take him from a Jan. 6 rally to the Capitol to join protesters.
