Last night the Jan. 6th Committee
subpoenaed the Secret Service for the missing text messages and other materials. The Committee points out that multiple House committees first asked the Department of Homeland Security (of which the Secret Service operates) for all relevant documents on January 16, 2021, just ten days after the attempted insurrection. Two days ago, the Secret Service issued a statement claiming that they've been fully responsive, but it appears they were playing games with that letter: it says that the systems upgrade (which may have resulted in texts being deleted) was initiated "in January 2021" and that "DHS OIG requested electronic communications for the first time on Feb. 26, 2021,
after the migration was under way" (emphasis original).
As others have
noted, that's clearly b.s. meant to deceive. When exactly in January 2021 did the project start? Was it before or after the Congressional request on Jan. 16? Why is that request not mentioned?
Oh, and just in the past hour the
Guardian reported that the DHS Inspector General yesterday told the Jan. 6th Committee that "the Secret Service’s explanation for the 'erased' texts kept shifting".
At this point, I think the big question will be: did Donald Trump order the text messages to be destroyed or did Tony Ornato come up with the idea on his own?
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On another 2020 election subject, a former FBI counterintelligence agent
discusses the national security risks inherent in the now-infamous December 18, 2020 meeting that was a focus of this week's Jan. 6th Committee hearing. Yesterday I thought it might be gratuitous of me to have mentioned that attendee Patrick Byrne (who has just testified to the Committee) had been the paramour of a Russian spy (who says Byrne provided her with financial assistance
after she was deported back to Russia). As as noted at the link, the other attendees included Mike Flynn,* who was a highly-paid unregistered agent of Turkey and is now being sued by the military for having failed to disclose payments he received from Russian state television, and Rudy Giuliani, who was already then implicated in the foreign influence schemes for which Lev Parnas and Igor Fruman have since pleaded guilty.
*By the way, Steve Bannon says that he thinks Flynn will be Donald Trump's 2024 running mate, or that if Trump doesn't run, that Flynn himself will run for president.
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Edited to add: I think the writers screwed up by having characters named both
Kurt Olsen and
William Olson, both of whom are lawyers, and one of whom (Olson) encouraged Donald Trump to hire the other (Olsen).
Couldn't they at least do follow the example of Ralph Bakshi and Peter Beagle when they changed Saruman to Aruman?