The super-scandal surrounding text messages dated 1/6 that were deleted from the Secret Service, Homeland Security, and now the Department of Defense has left one searching for appropriate adjectives to describe the moment. Journalist Seth Abramson was unequivocal on Tuesday — “American History’s Largest Cover-up” — and I am hard-pressed to dispute him.
“So now we have missing Secret Service texts that could establish contacts between Donald Trump and the domestic terrorists of Stop the Steal, missing DHS texts that would reveal secret lobbying by Trump’s ‘legal team,’ and possibly missing Pentagon texts about *martial law*,” Abramson wroteFollow us on Twitter. “The *practical* question, now: do Americans have a moral right to presume the worst about Trump entities that deliberately destroyed federal evidence regarding January 6? Has the USSS, DOD or DHS left us with any choice but to assume the deleted texts would be incriminating?”
Is there a moral right? Is it possible to reasonably expect the worst at this stage?
No, the trick here isn’t convincing people that a pack of Trump-tied insurrectionists scrubbed evidence of their crimes from government devices. The trick is getting people to overcome the amazing gravitational pull of “too much already!” and summon the will to act, to make Congress act, to decide that this seemingly eternal Trumpian farce be halted and broken once and for all. This is it.
It was enough that the Secret Service revealed it had deleted all text messages from the day before and the day of insurrection. When they were pressed, they were able to provide one (1) text message relating to the inquiry. The situation screamed “cover-up!” and carried genuinely ominous overtones of potential Secret Service involvement in Donald Trump’s efforts to overthrow the 2020 election by way of riot.
On July 29, it was reported Homeland Security watchdogs were aware of the deletions in Dec and started the process to recover them in February. But Inspector General Joseph V. Cuffari ended that process abruptly. “Cuffari, a former adviser to Arizona Gov. Doug Ducey (R), has been in his post since July 2019 after being nominated by Trump,” reports The Washington Post. Separate Post report details accusations leveled against Cuffari in 2003, when he “was accused of misleading federal investigators and running ‘afoul’ of ethics regulations while he was in charge of a Justice Department inspector general field office in Tucson.”
On August 1, “Two influential House Democrats called on Monday for two officials at the Department of Homeland Security’s independent watchdogTo testify to Congress about the agency’s handling of missing Secret Service text messages from the day of the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol, accusing their office of engaging in a cover-up,” according to The New York Times. Joseph Cuffari is among the two so-called officials.
Still not shady enough? This is a sample, courtesy of CNN:
According to court filings, the Defense Department deleted the phones of top DOD and Army officers at the end Trump’s administration. It also deleted any texts from key witnesses to the events surrounding the attack on the US Capitol on January 6, 2021.
American Oversight first revealed the fact that the phones of Pentagon officials were wiped in a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit. The watchdog group is seeking January 6 records from former acting Secretary of Defense Chris Miller, former chief of staff Kash Patel, and former Secretary of the Army Ryan McCarthy, among other prominent Pentagon officials — having filed initial FOIA requests just a few days after the Capitol attack.
Watergate burglars did have the foresight to pull their stunt at night. These clowns are visible in broad daylight and have destroyed crucial evidence related to an attempted coup. They did this within the walls of Secret Service, Homeland Security, and the Department of Defense.
Not only is this cover-up massive, it is altogether audacious, brazen, almost arrogant… and why not? This is Washington D.C. Except for those who took a bus from faraway to take part in the Capitol riot, nobody ever gets into trouble here. Then, you’re probably busted. Who were they who took you there and let you go? A few deleted texts later and they’re enjoying a steak at the Capitol Hill Club, irony definitely intended.
Consider all this when you hear Trump and his people promote their plans for “Schedule F”: the deliberate replacement of merit-based government employees with people loyal to Trump. Feed this into any “what could happen?” algorithm and smoke will belch from the computer vents.
“Schedule F involves nothing less than the obliteration of vast swaths of the federal workforce,” I wrote last week, “who would reportedly be replaced by employees loyal to Trump and his madding MAGA horde. It is the realization of Steve Bannon’s war on the administrative state, combined with Trump’s apparently bottomless need to inflict chaotic pain in the name of revenge, and would damage the function of the federal government for generations.”
These deleted texts must be restored. There is a way. “Nothing is ever really deleted” is what they’ve been telling us for years now.
Nothing other than the truth.
