The committee can now determine which agents’ call records it might want to review, and if they decide to, it could either request records from the agents directly or issue subpoenas to their mobile carriers, an official familiar with the situation explained. The Secret Service and the Department of Homeland Security, which oversees the agency, have faced criticism in recent weeks for deleting text messages belonging to agents on and around Jan. 6, 2021. Democrats in Congress have blamed Homeland Security’s inspector general that he abandoned efforts to collect text and phone records from that day. Searching and obtaining information from personal devices of federal employees is a “highly unusual” step by the commission, according to Don Mihalek, a retired Secret Service agent, and could reflect a renewed effort by the agency to further demonstrate cooperation her with congressional investigators. . A Secret Service agent stands alongside Marine One at Fort McNair in Washington, DC, July 10, 2022. Joshua Roberts/Reuters, FILE The Secret Service has faced heavy criticism in recent weeks as the committee’s testimony focused on Trump’s behavior on Jan. 6, 2021, and what agents assigned to the White House did and saw that day. At the same time, Mihalek said, the agency’s decision to hand over personal device information to the commission could create thorny legal challenges. “If the agency were to turn over these private phone numbers, the only appropriate way to do so would be through a subpoena or a court order,” said Michalek, an ABC News contributor. “In the absence of that, their delivery could be problematic.” A Secret Service spokesman recently acknowledged that some phone data from January 2021 was lost as a result of a pre-planned data transfer, noting that the transfer was underway when the inspector general’s office made the request in February 2021. ABC News reported Thursday that DHS is reviewing its electronic retention policies and will stop wiping the phones of political appointees until the review is complete. The Secret Service and representatives of the Jan. 6 committee declined to comment. ABC News’ Aaron Katersky and Luke Barr contributed reporting.
