Key Dems want DHS Inspector General removed from Secret Service probe
Reps. Carolyn B. Maloney (D-N.Y.), who heads the House committee that oversees inspectors general, and Bennie G. Thompson (D-Miss.), chairman of the Jan. 6 committee and the Homeland Security Committee, wrote a joint letter expressing “grave concerns” about Cuffari’s failure to promptly alert Congress that the Secret Service’s texts had been erased. They asked the Council of the Inspectors General on Integrity and Efficiency, an independent entity in the executive branch, to appoint another inspector general to handle the Secret Service probe.
“Inspector General Cuffari is required by law to ‘immediately’ report problems or abuses that are ‘particularly serious or flagrant,’” they wrote. “Yet, Inspector General Cuffari failed to provide adequate or timely notice that the Secret Service had refused for months to comply with DHS Office of Inspector General (OIG) requests for information related to the January 6 attack and failed to notify Congress after DHS OIG learned that the Secret Service had erased text messages related to this matter.
“These omissions left Congress in the dark about key developments in this investigation and may have cost investigators precious time to capture relevant evidence,” they wrote.
Cuffari and the council did not immediately respond to requests for comment about the letter, which was sent to Cuffari and to Allison Lerner, the council’s chair.
The letter comes days after Cuffari opened a criminal investigation into the Secret Service’s allegedly missing texts. He sent a letter to Congress this month accusing the agency of erasing text messages from the time around the assault on the Capitol and after he asked for them for his own investigation.
The Secret Service has denied maliciously erasing messages and said the deletions were part of a preplanned technology shift.
The Secret Service’s text messages could offer a window into the actions of former president Donald Trump as his supporters ransacked the Capitol in an attempt to overturn the results of the 2020 presidential election, and endangered Vice President Mike Pence and many others.
The National Archives and Records Administration and others have raised questions about the Service’s handling of federal records. Agents, like the rest of the federal government, are required to upload their text messages and other federal records under the decades-old Federal Records Act.
This is a developing story.
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