Trump-Appointed DHS Official Halted Probe Into Missing Jan. 6 Secret Service Texts: Report

Andrew Caballero-Reynolds/AFP via Getty Images

A high-ranking Department of Homeland Security official who offered to help investigators find deleted Secret Service text messages on or around Jan. 6 did not follow through on the offer, according to the Washington Post.

In fact, the Trump-appointed official changed his mind, and was aware the messages were gone as far back as last December. He never disclosed the information.

DHS Inspector General Joseph Cuffari announced he would make an attempt to retrieve the messages in February. He called off the effort later in the month.

The Post, citing numerous sources close to the matter, reported:

In early February, after learning that the Secret Service’s text messages had been erased as part of a migration to new devices, staff at Inspector General Joseph V. Cuffari’s office planned to contact all DHS agencies offering to have data specialists help retrieve messages from their phones, according to two government whistleblowers who provided reports to Congress.

But later that month, Cuffari’s office decided it would not collect or review any agency phones, according to three people briefed on the decision.

On Feb. 18, numerous employees working under Cuffari ordered investigators not to seek out phones or the data that might have been on them.

No explanation for the decision was offered.

The Post cited four sources close to DHS with regard to the inquiry into what happened to correspondence between agents protecting former President Donald Trump at the time of the Capitol attack.

The reporting also stated Cuffari was aware other DHS messages were gone in December of 2021, which he neglected to divulge last month in a letter to Congress. According to the report:

Cuffari wrote a letter to the House and Senate Homeland Security committees this month saying the Secret Service’s text messages from the time of the attack had been “erased.”

But he did not immediately disclose that his office first discovered that deletion in December and failed to alert lawmakers or examine the phones. Nor did he alert Congress that other text messages were missing, including those of the two top Trump appointees running the Department of Homeland Security during the final days of the administration.

Cuffari reportedly never pressed for information on why two non-Secret Service agent DHS employees were missing texts from Jan. 6.

Lawmakers were first informed messages sent and received by the agency from Jan. 5 and Jan. 6, 2021 were “erased” as part of a routine data migration process two weeks ago.

Secret Service spokesman Anthony Guglielmi has denied the agency deleted any messages maliciously.

The House select committee investigating the Capitol attack, and presumably the Justice Department, would like to view the messages for a clearer picture into Trump’s actions leading up to and on Jan. 6.

Cuffari was nominated for the OIG position by Trump in 2019.