Quick Takes (v66):Really? Only One?

Do you believe members of the Secret Service didn't send any texts on January 5-6, 2021?

Do you believe there was a "planned system migration" that began in January 2021 which required no advance data backup?

Do you believe all Secret Service agents and employees correctly identified and flagged anything that should be saved for posterity?

And do you believe the spy agency is unable to recover any data from the phones? I mean, they're spies, right? It's right in their name that they 'service secrets,' for Pete's sake. 

Maryland's Rep. Jamie Raskin, a member of the House January 6th Committee, appeared on The Late Show with Stephen Colbert, and was asked if he's buying what the Secret Service is telling the Committee, and the American public about the text messages. Raskin said he "really doesn't buy that for one minute." 

More importantly, I think, was that he reminded us that everyone in the Capitol that night was reaching out to loved ones - children, spouses, parents - because they thought they might never see them again. And so, he said, it was not surprising to the Committee that the Secret Service would be doing the same thing. 

And, by extension, I think it's logical that they might also have been reaching out to others at the USSS, other departments where they had contacts, other protective details, and so on - not to say goodbye, but to find out what the heck was going on in other parts of the building or outside the building, or to beg for help, to ask when help was going to get there, to ask why help wasn't coming - you know, things like that. 

According to Anthony Guglielmi, Chief of Communications for the USSS who said in a statement to The Hill, there's really no reason for Raskin or anyone else to be concerned. 

There’s no reason for us to say the texts were lost. I mean, how do you know that those people texted? They were told to upload their official records, and they did. So, this is partly what we’re going to communicate to the committee, all of the data that we have. People say texts were lost. How do you know texts were sent? 

One might ask how he's so sure official records were uploaded, and how he knows no texts were sent - because he does seem certain about that. 

There's an ongoing spat between the USSS and the DHS Office of Inspector General, which announced an ongoing criminal investigation after asking for a full month's worth of communications - from December 8 2020 through January 7, 2021 - from a couple dozen employees. That request was where the single text we've heard about was found.

The Secret Service submitted the responsive records it identified, namely, a text message conversation from former US Capitol Police Chief Steven Sund to former Secret Service Uniformed Division Chief Thomas Sullivan requesting assistance on January 6, 2021, and advised the agency did not have any further records responsive to the DHS OIG's request for text messages.

For a full month, there was only one text? Seriously? And that text was from a former employee of the Capitol Police to a former Secret Service employee? How incredibly convenient that all seems.

And, yes, somehow the Secret Service confirmed that no texts were lost in the data migration. Because, again, according to Guglielmi,

DHS OIG requested electronic communications for the first time on Feb. 26, 2021, after the migration was well under way. The Secret Service notified DHS OIG of the loss of certain phones’ data, but confirmed to OIG that none of the texts it was seeking had been lost in the migration. 

So, to recap:

We only found one,

 which means there only was one, 

because we confirmed nothing was lost, 

and besides, who said anything was sent. 

Seriously - that's what we're supposed to believe? 

I'm with Raskin on this one - and with every other American who's ever gone through a data migration at work, or purchased a new desktop, laptop, or tablet, or who has ever changed phones, or phone carriers: I'm not buying it.