(JustPatriots.com)- There has been much debate about the Secret Service text messages sent around January 6, 2021, that were apparently deleted after the agency received notification to preserve all information from that time period.
The House’s special committee investigating the attacks on the Capitol on that day had subpoenaed the records after receiving word that the messages may have been deleted. And while the panel members desperately want to get their hands on those messages as part of their investigation into the entire incident, there’s someone else who wants them even more — former President Donald Trump.
This week, Trump posted a message on Truth Social, the social media platform he owns, that said he wants those Secret Service records “far more” than the members of the House’s select committee.
The reason he wants the records, he said, is they would prove that he did not do what others have accused him of doing that day.
One of the top aides to Mark Meadows, the chief of staff at the White House during the Trump administration, testified to the House committee about an incident she heard while she was working.
That aide, Cassidy Hutchinson, said she was told by Tony Ornato — who was the deputy chief of staff for Trump at that time — that the president demanded that the Secret Service take him to the Capitol building on January 6 so he could join his supporters who had marched there from the Ellipse following his speech at the Stop the Steal rally.
Hutchinson testified that Ornato told her that when Secret Service agents who were driving Trump in the presidential limo told him they wouldn’t drive him there for security reasons, he yelled at them and lunged at one of them while also grabbing the limo’s steering wheel.
Trump has denied that entire account, though, and he said this week that the Secret Service records would disprove Hutchinson’s account. Trump posted on Truth Social:
“I want the Secret Service tapes far more than the Unselect Committee of political Hacks and Thugs in that ridiculous and libelous story of me supposedly choking a big and strong Secret Service Agent around the neck while the Beast (wrong car!) would be shown to be, as the Secret Service has already confirmed, Fake (and Fraudulent!).”
Following Hutchinson’s testimony, both Ornato and the Secret Service denied that what she said actually happened. Robert Engle, who is the agent that the president allegedly lunged at, as well as Ornato have both said they would testify that none of it happened as Hutchinson described.
The Secret Service was subpoenaed to provide text messages from January 5 and January 6 of 2021, in an effort to try to prove that what Hutchinson said was true. But, apparently, they deleted those text messages as part of a pre-planned re-set of their cellphones.
The agency has said they never deleted the messages maliciously, though Democratic members of the House special committee have said they don’t believe them.
