The Secret Service, responsible in particular for the protection of the President of the United States, deleted the text messages of several agents sent on the day of the assault on Congress in Washington on January 6, 2021 by supporters of Donald Trump.

Joseph Cuffari, inspector general for the Department of Homeland Security, said in a letter sent Thursday to congressional leaders that he had difficulty obtaining Secret Service records dating from January 5 and 6, 2021.

These messages could be crucial for the investigations of the House of Representatives and the Department of Justice to determine if the former Republican president and his associates encouraged the deadly assault on Capitol Hill, in an attempt to prevent the certification of the victory of his Democratic opponent. Joe Biden on the November 2020 ballot.

Secret Service agents were with Donald Trump that day and with Vice President Mike Pence, who had been hiding on Capitol Hill after pro-Trump activists called for him to be hanged.

“The department has notified us that numerous United States Secret Service (USSS) messages, dated January 5 and 6, 2021, have been deleted as part of a device replacement program,” Joseph Cuffari wrote in his email. , revealed by The Intercept. and later published by Politico and CNN.

The Secret Service denies the charges.

“The USSS deleted these text messages after the OIG (Office of the Inspector General) requested electronic communications records” for factual review on January 6, he continued. In addition, says Joseph Cuffari, the ministry was slow to deliver other documents requested by the OIG.

In a statement issued hours after the CNN and Politico stories, Secret Service spokesman Anthony Guglielmi dismissed Joseph Cuffari’s allegations, saying the officers’ phones were reset as part of a planned replacement program that began earlier. of the OIG request six weeks after the assault.

“The Secret Service reported to the Office of the Inspector General the loss of data from some phones but confirmed to the OIG that none of the text messages they were looking for were lost during this migration,” he added.