because time is working against them and i think, you know, they are an agency that that s enjoyed the status of being one of our nation s most elite organizations and i do i think they have to work to maintain that and they need to do it as quickly as they can. gordon, based on what you know, thank you so much for joining us this morning based on what you know is there any logical explanation for why these messages, not others because they ve turned over other documents related to january 6, but these text messages now they can t find? well, kaitlan, in my opinion this situation is unusual. the service, as i said, has a system for protecting and preserving all of its records. now, it s the responsibility of the secret service leadership to follow its policies, including its process for, you know,
general. you know, the way the service has handled this situation has created doubt. i think that that doubt began when the secret service allowed one of its agents to serve in a political position in the white house and the doubt has continued up to today in its handling of this congressional request for records. but, you know, first of all, we don t know exactly what is missing here and the service either has records or they don t. i do know that the secret service has a process and it s a good process, at least in my memory, for how it handles and maintains all records to include text messages. if the service doesn t have those records now as they ve indicated, then they should explain why and whether these messages were deleted and if they were deleted was it intentionally or was it by accident? so i just i think the service has to move very quickly on this
provide just one text exchange to the january 6th committee. that s remarkable. just one. after a request from the homeland security inspector general for a month s worth of personnel records. this is according to a letter obtained by cnn and it contains text messages sent before and around the attack on the capitol. the national archives asked the secret service separately to investigate all this, saying they are aware of the potential unauthorized deletion of agency text messages. and, john, the committee has gotten thousands of documents, pages of documents, related to january 6th, but it is not the text messages that they re seeking. they got one of the messages, but they re seeking many more and the secret service spokesman told the new york times, it is likely the phone records will never be recovered. it prompted many questions about the agency s transparency and credibility. so joining us now to talk about this is cnn s senior justice correspondent evan perez. and eric
on the work of the inspector general s office. also, the source says, the ig told the committee that the secret service had not been fully cooperative with his probe. the source said the inspector general s description left the impression that the secret service had been, quote, foot dragging. the inspector general told the committee, according to the source, that his office is not getting full access to personnel records. the source also said the ig told the committee he brought the issue more than once to the secretary of home land security, whole he said continued to try to get the information. according to the source, the inspector general said that is when he decided to go to congress because he was getting nowhere with his concerns. we want to point out that s just one side of the issue. department of homeland security did not comment on the matter to cnn, so there s a lot we don t know, starting with congressman jamie raskin telling cnn there are contradictory statements by the