Deleted Secret Service texts

National Archives asks Homeland Security to explain potentially deleted Secret Service texts

By Ryan Nobles, Zachary Cohen and Annie Grayer

The National Archives has joined a growing list of federal agencies and officials demanding answers about a batch of missing text messages from the US Secret Service from January 5 and 6, 2021, that may have been deleted.

Laurence Brewer, the Chief of Records officer for the US Government sent a letter to the Department of Homeland Security Records officer on Tuesday asking the agency to clear up if the text messages were deleted and explain why.

"If it is determined that any text messages have been improperly deleted (regardless of their relevance to the OIG/Congressional inquiry of the events on January 6, 2021), then the Secret Service must send NARA a report within 30 calendar days of the date of this letter with a report documenting the deletion," Brewer wrote in the letter to Damian Kokinda, the DHS Records officer, referencing the DHS Office of Inspector General.

The possible deletion of texts was first brought to light last week by the Homeland Security inspector general, who sent the chairs of the House and Senate Homeland Security committees a letter informing them that the texts may be missing and raising concerns that DHS officials had been slow to respond to their requests for information.

The letter led the House select committee investigating the January 6 insurrection to call the inspector general, Joseph Cuffari, into a closed-door meeting two days after his letter was released. The committee also quickly issued a subpoena Friday to the Secret Service, demanding the records, their first such request of an executive branch agency.

The National Archives request is separate and apart from the House's January 6 investigation. Their mission is to protect and preserve government records and by statute can compel an agency to explain why records may have gone missing. The probe into what went wrong will not be conducted by the Archives itself, but instead by Secret Service, which must then issue a report back to Archives.

"USSS has 30 days to submit a report to NARA on their investigation into the circumstances of this alleged unauthorized deletion," a spokesperson for the National Archives said in a statement to CNN. "In general, investigations into occurrences of unauthorized disposal, deletion or removal are conducted by the designated Agency Records Officers who direct the records management programs in agencies."

The Department of Homeland Security has previously said that it will comply with the subpoena request by the January 6 committee, saying in a statement that the department "has ensured and will continue to ensure that both the DHS Office of the Inspector General (OIG) and the Select Committee to Investigate the January 6 Attack on the United States Capitol have the information they have requested."

Members of the select committee believe it is possible the text messages could still be recovered. They were planning to receive some of the material as soon as Tuesday.

"We did get a briefing from the inspector of general of Homeland Security," Rep. Zoe Logren, a member of the committee and a Democrat from California, told ABC News on Sunday. "And then there was a statement made by the spokesperson for the department saying that it wasn't true, it wasn't fair, and that they, in fact, had pertinent texts. And we go, fine, if you have them, we need them. And we expect to get them by this Tuesday. So we'll see."