Microscope Draws Closer On Secret Service Cooperation
Committee members discuss getting testimony and those missing text messages
Questions are growing over the extraordinary refusal of the Secret Service to cooperate with the House select committee investigating the events surrounding the January 6, 2021, insurrection.
It's become a stunning — and puzzling — case of one branch of the federal government refusing to work with another.
Secret Service officials turned over a single text message after the select committee requested the agency turn over all text messages from January 5 and 6, 2021, as then-President Donald Trump and a cabal of his supporters attempted — by force — to install Trump in an illegal second term in the White House.
Focus has intensified on the Secret Service since the breathtaking testimony of former White House aide Cassidy Hutchinson who revealed that following his rally on the morning of January 6, Trump demanded to be driven to the US Capitol, to join his supporters.
Hutchinson told the committee, during one of its riveting televised public hearings, that she had been told that when Trump was informed by security that he would not be going to the Capitol, he lunged to the front of his vehicle and tried to turn the wheel with one hand while using his other hand to “lunge” at Robert Engel, the Secret Service agent in charge that day.
Hutchinson testified that she had been told this story by Tony Ornato, then-White House deputy chief of staff, and that Engel had been there as the story was told.
However, when asked to turn over text messages, Secret Service officials claimed that most had been destroyed.
Also, regarding Secret Service officials coming to testify before the select committee under oath, Republican member Adam Kinzinger, of Illinois, said in a television interview this week, “The door’s wide open.”
One of just two Republicans on the panel, Kinzinger explained that “there’s always back-and-forth negotiations.”
“The committee is more than welcome, if they will testify under oath, to throw the doors wide open for them and welcome them at any moment. It is not our decision that they haven’t so far. What we have is a very credible witness in Cassidy Hutchinson talking about what she had heard. She’s just saying, ‘Hey, this is what had been told to me.’ She did it under oath, in front of millions and millions of people,” he added.
Meanwhile, one of the committee's Democratic members, Rep Adam Schiff of California, said that the panel hasn't given up hope retrieving those messages from the Secret Service — but at least wants answers why those text messages were destroyed.
“We want to put them under oath, if they weren't previously under oath, so that we can understand exactly what was happening on January 5 and January 6. And we have profound concerns about what's going on at the Secret Service,” Schiff said in a separate interview this week. “We are now, for the first time, getting documents that we had requested long, long ago. There's one issue about why they weren't provided earlier. But they're also showing us some new things.
“And, furthermore, we want to obtain those text messages, if there's any way to retrieve them. But, either way, we want to get answers as to why those were destroyed,” Schiff added.
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