WASHINGTON: The US House committee investigating the Jan 6 assault on the Capitol said late on Friday night it had subpoenaed the Secret Service over questions surrounding missing text messages from the days surrounding the riot last year.

The inspector general of the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), Joseph Cuffari, told Congress earlier this week that his office has had difficulties obtaining records of text messages from the Secret Service, the law enforcement agency that protects the president, from Jan 5 and 6, 2021.

Representative Bennie Thompson, chairman of the Jan 6 committee, informed the agency’s director James Murray in a letter of the subpoena compelling the Secret Service to hand over the missing texts by Tuesday.

“The Select Committee seeks the relevant text messages, as well as any after action reports that have been issued in any and all divisions of the USSS pertaining or relating in any way to the events of Jan 6, 2021,” the letter, posted to the committee’s website, said.

The messages could be important in the House of Representatives and Justice Department investigations into whether Donald Trump and his close advisors encouraged the deadly insurrection by the former president’s supporters, which aimed to prevent the certification of his Democratic rival Joe Biden as the winner of the November 2020 election.

Published in Dawn, July 17th, 2022