The U.S. Secret Service has denied allegations that the agency deleted text messages from January 5 and 6, 2021 after they had been requested by the Department of Homeland Security's inspector general.
Secret Service Chief of Communications Anthony Guglielmi issued a strongly worded statement on Thursday that refuted the claims by the Office of Inspector General (OIG) and blamed a "reset" of the agency's mobile phones for the loss of some data other than the messages in question.
In a letter to Congress on Wednesday, DHS Inspector General Joseph Cuffari wrote that many text messages from January 5 and 6, 2021 were deleted even after OIG had requested them.
The Secret Service initially said the messages were lost as part of a "device- replacement" program, according to OIG, but the agency issued a statement late on Thursday denying that the texts OIG sought had been lost.
"The insinuation that the Secret Service maliciously deleted text messages following a request is false," Guglielmi's statement said. "In fact, the Secret Service has been fully cooperating with the Department of Homeland Security Office of Inspector General (DHS OIG) in every respect—whether it be interviews, documents, emails, or texts."
"First, in January 2021, before any inspection was opened by OIG on this subject, the Secret Service began to reset its mobile phones to factory settings as part of a pre-planned, three-month system migration. In that process, data resident on some phones was lost," the...
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