Comment The Department of Homeland Security’s chief watchdog canceled his investigative team’s effort to harvest agency phones to try to recover deleted Secret Service messages this year, according to four people with knowledge of the decision and internal records reviewed by The Washington Post. In early February, after learning that Secret Service text messages had been deleted as part of the switch to new devices, staff in the office of Inspector General Joseph W. Koufari planned to contact all DHS agencies that offered to request data experts to help retrieve messages from their phones, according to two government whistleblowers who briefed Congress. But later that month, Cuffari’s office decided it would not collect or review any agency phones, according to three people briefed on the decision. The latest revelation comes as Democratic lawmakers accused Cuffari’s office of failing to aggressively investigate the agency’s actions in response to the violent attack on Capitol Hill by supporters of then-President Donald Trump on Jan. 6, 2021. Cuffari wrote a letter to the House and Senate Homeland Security committees this month saying Secret Service text messages from the time of the attack had been “deleted.” However, he did not immediately disclose that his office first discovered this deletion in December and did not notify lawmakers or review the phones. Nor did he notify Congress that other texts were missing, including those from two top Trump appointees who ran the Department of Homeland Security during the administration’s final days. Cuffari and his staff did not respond to repeated requests for comment this week via email and phone. Cuffari, a former adviser to Arizona Gov. Doug Ducey (R), has been in the position since July 2019 after being appointed by Trump. DHS spokeswoman Marsha Espinosa said the agency is cooperating with investigators and “looking at every avenue to recover text messages and other material for the Jan. 6 searches.” Texts from January 6 to Wolf and Cuccinelli of Trump Homeland Security are missing After discovering that some of the text messages requested by the guard had been deleted, the Federal Protective Service, a DHS agency that guards federal buildings, offered their phones to inspector general investigators, saying they did not have the resources to retrieve lost messages. and other files in theirs, according to three people familiar with the plan who spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss a sensitive investigation. A senior forensic analyst in the inspector general’s office took steps to collect Federal Protection Agency phones, the people said. But late on Friday night, Feb. 18, one of several MPs reporting to Cuffari’s management team wrote an email to investigators instructing them not to take the phones or search for data from them, according to a copy of an internal record which was shared with The Post. Staff investigators also drafted a letter in late January and early February to all DHS agencies offering to help recover any text messages or other data that may have been lost. But Cuffari’s management team later changed that draft to say that if companies could not retrieve phone messages for the Jan. 6 period, “they should provide a detailed list of unavailable data and the reason the information is not available,” they said three persons. Cuffari also learned in late February that text messages for two top DHS officials under the Trump administration on the day of the attack were missing, lost in a “reset” of their government phones when they left their jobs in January 2021. according to an internal file obtained by the Project on Government Oversight. But Cuffari did not press department leadership to explain why they did not preserve those records, or attempt to retrieve them, according to the four people briefed on the warden’s actions. Cuffari also did not notify Congress about the missing records. Those and other discrepancies prompted key Democrats to look into the attack and the Department of Homeland Security to subpoena the Secret Service and ask Cuffari to recuse himself from the investigation. Rep. Bennie G. Thompson (D-Miss.), chairman of the House Homeland Security Committee and the committee investigating the Jan. 6 attack, and Carolyn B. Maloney (DN.Y.), chairman of the committee overseeing the inspectors general, said in a letter to Cuffari on Tuesday that they have “no confidence” that he can conduct the investigation. Sen. Richard J. Durbin (D-Ill.), chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, issued a statement Friday calling the missing messages “an extremely serious matter” and said he would ask the Justice Department to intervene. “Inspector General Cuffari’s failure to take immediate action upon learning that these text messages had been deleted makes it clear that he should no longer be assigned this investigation,” Durbin said in a statement. “That’s why I’m sending a letter today to Attorney General Garland asking him to step in and figure out what happened with these text messages and hold those responsible accountable.” Cuffari has been given August 9 to respond to lawmakers. Cuffari opened a criminal investigation into the missing Secret Service text messages this month, one of dozens his office is conducting as part of its work overseeing the Department of Homeland Security, the nation’s third-largest agency. Many, including Democrats in Congress, viewed the timing and motivation of the investigation with suspicion, as Cuffari had not pressed to investigate the fact that the records had been deleted when he first learned of it months earlier. DHS includes agencies such as the Secret Service, the Federal Protection Agency, and Immigration and Border Protection. Three people briefed on his handling of the missing messages painted a portrait of an office floundering over how to handle the matter, despite having highly trained officials ready to attack the matter and federal agencies willing to cooperate. A former senior inspector general’s office official who left the agency this year said Cuffari’s office instructed the official to call the agency’s top medical examiner on a Saturday early this year to tell him to “resign” from continuing of the forensic work on the Secret Service Telephones. “This was done at the behest of the inspector general’s office,” said the former senior official, speaking on condition of anonymity because they are no longer with the office. Cuffari’s office continued to issue petitions and, on the day lawmakers called on him to step down, tweeted about awards they had won for inspections. The awards come from the Board of Inspectors General for Integrity and Effectiveness, an independent executive agency that supports inspectors general. In their letter, Thompson and Maloney asked the board to find a replacement for Cuffari on the investigation into the missing intelligence documents. The board said it could help find a replacement only if Cuffari decided to resign and asked them for help finding a replacement, its executive director, Alan F. Boehm, said in an email. Cuffari sent a letter to the House and Senate Homeland Security committees this month accusing the Secret Service of deleting text messages from the time around the Capitol attack after he had requested them for his own investigation. The Secret Service denied deleting malicious text messages and said the deletions were part of a pre-planned “system transition” of its phones. They said none of the texts sought by Cuffari’s office had gone missing. The Federal Records Act and other laws require federal agencies to maintain government records, and it is a crime, punishable by fines and jail time, to willfully destroy government records. In addition to the Secret Service, text messages for Trump acting Homeland Security Secretary Chad Wolf and Deputy Secretary Ken Cuccinelli were missing for a significant period before the Jan. 6 attack, according to four people briefed on the matter and internal emails. But Cuccinelli and Wolf said they turned over their phones, as Wolf put it in a tweet, “fully loaded” and said it was up to DHS to preserve their messages. On Twitter, Wolf wrote: “I complied with all data retention laws and returned all my equipment fully loaded to the Department. Perfect. DHS has all the texts, emails, phone logs, schedules, etc. Any issues with missing data should be directed to DHS.” Cuccinelli, also on Twitter, said he turned in his phone before he left DHS and suggested the agency “wipe” his phone after he left. The National Archives and Records Administration has sought more information about “the possible unauthorized deletion” of Secret Service text messages, but that inquiry could be delayed because of Cuffari’s criminal investigation at the agency. The Archives had no immediate comment Friday about Wolf and Cuccinelli’s text messages.
