Secret Service says deleted Jan. 6 texts likely won't be recovered

The Secret Service believes that several erased text messages sent and received by agents around the time of the Jan. 6 Capitol attack are unlikely to be recovered, the agency's spokesman said Tuesday.

Last week, the Department of Homeland Security's inspector general told the House select committee investigating the Capitol riot that the Secret Service couldn't produce some text messages from Jan. 5 and Jan. 6, 2021, due to a technology update. This update took place after the inspector general requested the messages, as part of a review of the Secret Service's response to Jan. 6. After learning this, the Jan. 6 committee issued a subpoena for those missing texts on Friday.

Subscribe to The Week

Escape your echo chamber. Get the facts behind the news, plus analysis from multiple perspectives.

SUBSCRIBE & SAVE
https://cdn.mos.cms.futurecdn.net/flexiimages/jacafc5zvs1692883516.jpg

Sign up for The Week's Free Newsletters

From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.

From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.

Sign up
Catherine Garcia, The Week US

Catherine Garcia has worked as a senior writer at The Week since 2014. Her writing and reporting have appeared in Entertainment Weekly, The New York Times, Wirecutter, NBC News and "The Book of Jezebel," among others. She's a graduate of the University of Redlands and the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism.