1/6 Insurrection Investigation

[Rick Plant]

House leaders demand interviews with Homeland Security watchdog over Secret Service 'cover up': report



On Monday, the Associated Press reported that House investigators want to speak with the inspector general for the Department of Homeland Security, alleging a "cover-up" about the Secret Service's missing text messages about the January 6 attack.

"The leaders of the powerful House Oversight and Homeland Security committees wrote a letter to Inspector General Joseph Cuffari on Monday, detailing the urgent need for interviews with his staff regarding new evidence of alleged efforts to cover up the erasure of Secret Service communications," reported Farnoush Amiri. "'We are writing with grave new concerns over your lack of transparency and independence, which appear to be jeopardizing the integrity of a crucial investigation run by your office,' House Oversight Chair Carolyn Maloney and Homeland Security Chairman Bennie Thompson wrote in the letter. They also renewed their calls for Cuffari to recuse himself from investigations of the erased texts."

Thompson also chairs the House Select Committee on January 6.

"The committees said it has obtained evidence that shows the inspector general's office first learned of the missing Secret Service text messages, as part of its investigation into the attack on the U.S. Capitol, in May 2021. And that emails between top DHS IG officials show the agency decided to abandon efforts to recover those text messages in July 2021, nearly a year before they first informed Congress they were erased," said the report. "'These documents raise troubling new concerns that your office not only failed to notify Congress for more than a year that critical evidence in this investigation was missing, but your senior staff deliberately chose not to pursue that evidence and then appear to have taken steps to cover up these failures,' the letter continued."

This comes after a recent report that the inspector general's office abandoned a plan in February to try to retrieve the missing text messages. It also comes as high-ranking Secret Service officials come under scrutiny over their ties to former President Donald Trump.

House Intelligence Committee Chair Adam Schiff (D-CA) has separately said he would like Secret Service officials to explain under oath how the text messages, which are supposed to be protected federal records, came to be deleted in the first place.

Read More Here: https://www.sfgate.com/news/article/Dems-allege-cover-up-on-Secret-Service-texts-17344136.php

[Rick Plant]

How the Secret Service directly witnessed Trump's effort to 'crown himself president again' — and the lost texts could be key



On Friday, MSNBC's Chris Hayes delved deep into the new reporting on further missing text messages within the Trump administration — and the significance of the matter to the House Select Committee investigating the January 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol.

One of the key points, Hayes argued, is that the Secret Service was allegedly a direct witness to former President Donald Trump and his allies as they schemed to overturn the presidential election — and the missing messages are at a crucial point of those events.

"Well, there are even more missing texts," said Hayes. "The Washington Post now reporting that text messages related to January 6 from Donald Trump's acting Secretary of Homeland Security, Chad Wolf, and acting Deputy Secretary, Ken Cuccinelli, have vanished. That's in addition to all the Secret Service text messages related to the 6th that have also gone missing. For an ostensibly apolitical organization like the Secret Service, this has become an enormous scandal. And this is the latest in Trump's attempt to overturn the will of voters, to end American democracy."

"The January 6 Committee has provided quite a bit of evidence showing that Trump wanted to use the Secret Service as a personal armed guard," said Hayes. "That he wanted to lead the mob personally to the Capitol, during insurrection, in order to ... disrupt the peaceful transfer of power. And make that the final step and basically crown himself president again. And he wanted the Secret Service to help him. Now we know that Trump was aware of the fact that much of the mob was armed. Trump apparently wanted the Secret Service to remove the metal detectors at the speech on the ellipse, where he incited the riot."

The missing messages, said Hayes, could highlight exactly what key Secret Service officials saw — and many of them appear unwilling to discuss it.

"All this speaks, of course, to how central the Secret Service was to the full picture of Donald Trump's attempted coup," said Hayes. "We know they were deeply involved in tracking, and planning, for both Trump and Pence during, before, and after the insurrection. But despite this, it appears the January 6 committee knows surprisingly little about the Secret Service's internal deliberations from that time. When the agents were doing and saying. Last month, for example, committeemember Congressman Stephanie Murphy from Florida, said that Tony Ornato is a key figure because he served as both a deputy White House chief of operations and head of Trump's Secret Service detail, and was not forthcoming to his testimony with the committee. Especially compared to Mark Meadows aide, Cassidy Hutchinson."

Watch below:

[Rick Plant]

Son of jailed Capitol rioter says Trump should 'absolutely' get prison time



Appearing on CNN's "New Day," the son of a Jan. 6 Capitol rioter said his father deserved the harsh prison sentence that he received on Monday -- and that Donald Trump should join him in jail.

Speaking with host Brianna Keilar, Jackson Reffitt was asked how he felt about his father, Guy Reffitt of Texas, who was sentenced to 87 months in jail for carrying a weapon to the Capitol after attending the "Stop the Steal" rally at the behest of the former president.

Parting company with his mother who claimed after the sentencing that the Capitol attackers -- including Ashli Babbitt -- were "patriots," Jackson Reffitt called out the "off the rails" violence of the day after being asked about his father's upcoming jail time.

"How are you feeling? How are you reacting to this sentence?" host Keilar asked.

"I mean, I'm not happy at all, I haven't been happy to this whole situation. No one in my family has either, but to say I'm surprised would be a lie," he replied. "I mean, everything my dad did, he's his own person and his action has consequences, but I'm not happy at all."

"Do you think he deserves this length of the sentence?" the CNN host pressed.

"I mean, absolutely, he deserves some time," he replied. "Whether to -- for anything, to rehabilitate, for his mental health, he deserves a lot of safety nets. But, yes, he does."

"It seems like, you know, your sister Peyton, listening to her, she feels kind of caught in the middle of this," Keilar prompted. "She's there at the courthouse, she loves you, she made that clear yesterday. She thinks that your dad, if he's getting this time, that Trump should be getting some time. What do you say to that?"

Reffitt, who turned his father in, shot back, "Absolutely. When she said that, I was flabbergasted. Not only was I impressed with her, she's so right."

"My dad was used as a puppet, and thousands of families have been," he continued. "Whether you agree with that, it's a fact at this point. It is disgusting to see that someone with practically money and social power can just get away with manipulating thousands of people just for whatever reason and have no outcome."

Watch the video below:

[Rick Plant]

'Cover-up as well as a crime': Legal experts respond to bombshell top Trump officials' phones were wiped after J6



Legal experts are quickly weighing in on the bombshell news that the cell phones of top Trump administration officials at the Pentagon were wiped after the January 6 insurrection.

“The Defense Department wiped the phones of top departing DOD and Army officials at the end of the Trump administration, deleting any texts from key witnesses to events surrounding the January 6, 2021, attack on the US Capitol, according to court filings,” states CNN, which was first to report the latest development in destruction of possible January 6 insurrection evidence.

The discovery of the wipe, and that records from the time surrounding the insurrection were lost, was made after the watchdog group American Oversight filed a Freedom of Information request against the Defense Dept. and the U.S. Army. By law all those records were required to be preserved.

The phones of former acting Secretary of Defense Chris Miller (photo), former chief of staff Kash Patel, and former Secretary of the Army Ryan McCarthy appear to have been wiped. CNN notes the individuals themselves do not appear to have executed the action.

The news that vital information and federal government records were not retained after one of the biggest criminal conspiracies in the nation’s history comes on the heels of the news that “many” text messages from U.S. Secret Service agents and officials from around the time of the insurrection were also destroyed after January 6.

“Cover-up as well as crime,” wrote Georgetown Law School professor of law Heidi Li Feldman in response to the CNN report.

“Intentional destruction of government records, including text messages, is a crime,” noted former chief White House ethics lawyer Richard Painter, who served during the George W. Bush administration. “Destruction of government records in the midst of a law enforcement investigation is obstruction of justice.Somebody should be going to the slammer for this.”

Joyce Vance, a former U.S. Attorney, now a law professor and legal analyst for NBC News and MSNBC, pointed to the timing of certain events.

“DOD wiped the phones of top departing officials as the Trump administration ended, deleting texts from key witnesses to 1-6, per court filings. Trump replaced the Secy of Defense & 3 top officials at DOD with loyalists AFTER he lost the election.”

“OK, Secret Service phones were wiped. So were those of Homeland Security. Now reportedly the same with the Pentagon. Anyone want to explain what was going on here?”

Jeff Sharlet, author of “The Family,” an investigation into power brokers of the far Christian right, asked: “Is it possible that all these J6 texts were deleted by coincidence. Sure, anything’s possible. Doesn’t matter: at this point any good faith observer has to err on the side of caution and proceed as if there’s a coverup.”

“So yes, there is a pretty massive coverup going on,” declared Abdallah Fayyad, a Boston Globe opinion writer.

“I’ve seen enough,” wrote YES! Magazine senior editor Chris Winters. “This is all part of the attempted cover-up of Trump’s attempted coup. There’s no “accidental” purge of texts. Subpoena, indict, convict.”

Talking Points Memo founder and Editor Josh Marshall served up a sarcastic observation: “Guess what!?!? Trump DOD officials somehow also got in on the secret service phone reboot.”Several noted journalists are also strongly suggesting this is evidence of a coverup.

“I’m picking up subtle hints that there may have been a wide-ranging coverup,” Brian Beutler, editor-in-chief of Crooked Media noted, apparently sarcastically.NBC News presidential historian Michael Beschloss sums up the events: "OK, Secret Service phones were wiped.  So were those of Homeland Security.  Now reportedly the same with the Pentagon. Anyone want to explain what was going on here?"

Read More Here: https://www.cnn.com/2022/08/02/politics/defense-department-missing-january-6-texts/index.html

[Rick Plant]

'Not a mere accident': Justice Department must investigate wiped Trump texts, former prosecutor says

On Tuesday's edition of MSNBC's "The Beat," former federal prosecutor Renato Mariotti weighed in on the new information that Pentagon phones containing potential January 6 evidence were wiped — which comes amid new investigations into similar deletions of data by the Secret Service.

The data deletions, Mariotti told anchor Ari Melber, are beginning to look like something intentional. The Justice Department should step in and investigate, he said.

"Talking about the missing text issue, I really think there is increasing concern that this was not just an accident, there was malfeasance here," Mariotti said. "First of all, we just heard reports today, Ari, that there was — there were missing texts from the Pentagon, so this wasn't just potentially deleted texts or inadvertent — by the Department of Homeland Security or another agency with missing texts from key Trump officials missing from January 6th."

"I think the time has come for the Justice Department to have its own investigation into this matter," Mariotti added. "This is, I think, a great subject for a potential criminal referral from Congress, even before the January 6th Committee investigation is over."

"And the watchdogs?" asked Melber, referring to doubts from members of Congress about the impartiality of the Homeland Security inspector general, who was appointed by former president Donald Trump.

"I think that, you know, that is something that really the Justice Department should take a look at," said Mariotti. "There's that old saying, who watches the watchers?"

"I think the question here is, look, we don't want to necessarily have a situation and set a precedent that Congress is going to force out every [investigator] they disagree with," he continued. "But there's a concern here because those texts were something that the OIG was aware of and take steps to follow that, and now there's an open criminal investigation of those missing texts. You have to wonder exactly what's going on there."

Watch:

[Joe Elliott]

A promise Joe Biden should break

https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/08/02/fire-dhs-inspector-general-cuffari/

When he was a presidential candidate, Joe Biden pledged — after President Donald Trump fired four government watchdogs in six weeks — that he wouldn’t remove any inspectors general if he were elected to replace Trump. President Biden needs to break that promise. Leaving bad watchdogs in place can be as detrimental as retaliating against them for conducting oversight.

Joseph Cuffari, inspector general for the Department of Homeland Security, has an extensive and documented pattern of failing to credibly oversee the department. The most recent example: Cuffari’s top aides actually shut down his own investigative team’s efforts to recover texts from around the time of the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the Capitol from department phones back in February.

This comes on top of revelations that Cuffari failed to tell Congress for months that such text messages from Secret Service and former DHS leaders Chad Wolf and Ken Cuccinelli are missing.

Cuffari’s failure to disclose this information in a timely way has set back efforts to fully understand how and why the riot on Jan. 6 happened — including DHS’s failure to issue specific intelligence warnings that the Capitol would be attacked.

Sen. Richard J. Durbin (D-Ill.), chair of the Senate Judiciary Committee, and Reps. Carolyn B. Maloney (D-N.Y.) and Bennie G. Thompson (D-Miss.), who chair the House committees on oversight and homeland security, respectively, have called for Cuffari to step aside from this investigation because of his poor handling of it.

And Cuffari’s failures extend far beyond the Secret Service text messages. The Department of Homeland Security needs a credible watchdog — and as long as Cuffari stays in his job, it will not have one.

The list of Cuffari’s failures to aggressively oversee his department is long and serious. He quashed reviews proposed by his own staff into the Secret Service’s involvement in the controversial use of force in Lafayette Square in June 2020, and into the Secret Service’s compliance with covid protocols. Both proposed reviews might have shed negative light on then-President Trump, who appointed Cuffari to his role.

For more than a year, Cuffari failed to inform agency leadership about rampant reported sexual misconduct within DHS. His team worked to scrub data that put the department’s disciplinary decisions in a poor light from a draft report that remains unreleased. The draft report found that more than 10,000 employees said they experienced sexual harassment or sexual misconduct, roughly 1 in 3 who responded to a survey.

In another report, Cuffari directed the removal of findings showing that 30 DHS law enforcement agents carry government-issued guns even though DHS has confirmed they violently abused their domestic partners. His reason: He didn’t want to engage in “second-guessing DHS disciplinary decisions without full facts,” according to an email he wrote.

Cuffari has balked at taking necessary actions that an independent watchdog would take. He questioned why his staff would need to interview the then-acting DHS secretary (who had been head of Customs and Border Protection) in a review examining what agency leaders knew about a controversial Facebook group filled with racist and sexist messages by current and former Border Patrol employees. Similarly, Cuffari’s top aides restricted how long rank-and-file watchdog staff could interview Wolf and Cuccinelli in a whistleblower retaliation investigation.

Removing an inspector general is a serious decision. The success of an inspector general’s office is dependent on the office’s independence and its ability to investigate and expose abuse without fear of retribution. But there must be consequences when an inspector general fails to conduct rigorous oversight and report severe problems.

The White House should not tolerate watchdogs who fail to hold their agencies accountable for egregious misconduct, and whose evasiveness and failure to take responsibility serve as a promise they will continue to do so. By failing to remove Cuffari for his significant failings as inspector general, the president is allowing a vital federal department, one with the profound power to affect civil liberties, to go without a credible watchdog.

Biden has more than enough evidence to remove Cuffari, and he is the only person with the power to do so.

My own hope? Cuffari is convicted of Obstruction of Justice. And others as well.

[Rick Plant]

Jan. 6 committee preparing subpoenas for Alex Jones emails and text messages accidentally leaked to Sandy Hook lawyer

The House Select Committee investigating the January 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol hopes to obtain text messages and emails from conspiracy theorist Alex Jones, according to Rolling Stone.

Mark Bankston, the lawyer for the Sandy Hook parents of 6-year-old Jesse Lewis, revealed in court Wednesday morning that Alex Jones' lawyer accidentally sent text message and emails to him

These were texts and emails that were supposed to be part of the discovery process in the early stages of the case, but Jones maintained that he'd turned over everything.

Within hours, the January 6 committee was at work on a subpoena to obtain the information, Rolling Stone reported.

Citing a "source familiar with the matter," the magazine said that the House committee is at work to request the data from the plaintiff's attorneys to aid in the ongoing investigation. Jones has appeared at times in videos shown by the committee over the course of the past several months.

The information was given to Bankston because Jones' lawyer "did not take any steps to identify it as privileged or protected in any way and as of two days ago it fell free and clear into my possession," he said in court. “That is how I know you lied to me.”

AFP