Jan. 6 Panel Tells Secret Service to Keep Seeking Missing Texts

  • Say the agency may have violated law by not preserving them
  • One suspicious committee member says, ‘I smell a rat’
Bennie Thompson and Liz Cheney attend a House Select Committee hearing on the January 6th attack in Washington, D.C., on July 12.Photographer: Al Drago/Bloomberg
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The US Secret Service may have violated the Federal Records Act by not preserving text messages of 24 employees from the day before and during the Capitol attack, leaders of the House committee investigating the Jan. 6 riot said.

Chair Bennie Thompson and Vice Chair Liz Cheney said Wednesday in a statement that “every effort” must be made to retrieve texts that the Secret Service says were inadvertently erased during an equipment upgrade that began on Jan. 27, 2021.