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Before it was instructed to halt its investigation last week, the United States Secret Service found records of deleted text messages on or around January 6, 2021, stored on the phones of at least 10 agents.
Secret Service investigators discovered metadata showing that text messages were insurrection, and whether they should have been preserved amid an ongoing House investigation into the riot, two unnamed sources told the network.
Among the text records the Department of Homeland Security Inspector General requested were those of the heads of the detail for both former President and Vice President : Bobby Engel and Tim Giebels, respectively.
It's unclear whether they are included among the 10 personnel whose phones contained metadata showing records of deleted texts.
But among the 24 Secret Service members that were originally under scrutiny by the Department of Homeland Security Inspector General, sources told CNN, 10 other members had no text messages around that time and three others only had personal messages.
The deletion of the messages has raised the prospect of lost evidence that could shed further light on then-President Donald Trump's actions during the insurrection, particularly after testimony about his confrontation with security as he tried to join supporters at the Capitol. 
An internal Secret Service investigation reportedly found 10 agents had records of sent or received text messages from the days surrounding the January 6 insurrection, but they had since been deleted. Agents are seen here entering the Capitol to evacuate senators during the riot
Investigators were working to determine whether the content of these texts contained information about the Capitol insurrection, and should have been preserved amid an ongoing House investigation into the riot (pictured)
It's unclear now what will happen to the 10 Secret Service members who were found to have deleted text messages from the time, as the Inspector General ordered the agency to cease its internal investigation amid a criminal probe. 
Secret Service agents, though, say the texts could have been deleted accidentally, when the agency conducted a months-long data migration of its phones beginning Jan. 27, 2021. 
The agency left it up to individual agents to decide what electronic records to keep and what to delete during the process.
Among the text records the Department of Homeland Security Inspector General requested were those of the heads of the detail for both former President Donald Trump and Vice President Mike Pence: Bobby Engel and Tim Giebels, respectively. It is unclear whether they are included among the 10 personnel whose phones contained metadata showing records of deleted texts
Joe Maher, the principal deputy general counsel at the Department of Homeland Security, was tasked with circulating a January 2021 letter to component agencies - presumably including the Secret Service - ensuring they preserve records related to the insurrection. The agency now says it never received that message
According to a letter sent to the Secret Service from the House Select Committee investigating the insurrection, the inspector general first asked for records from 24 personnel in June 2021.
'The Select Committee seeks the relevant text messages, as well as any after action reports that have been issued in any and all divisions of the USSS pertaining or relating in any way to the events of January 6, 2021,' January 6, panel Chairman Bennie Thompson wrote in a letter to Secret Service Director James Murray.
The committee also specifically requested 'all documents and communications related to actual or attempted conversations between any DHA official and President Trump and/or any other White House official' about the January 5 rally and January 6 riot.
The request came more than two months after the data migration should have been complete, according to CNN. 
At the time, Secret Service agents were supposed to manually back up their texts before the migration, sources allege. If an employee failed to do so, their messages would've been permanently deleted during the process.
'Any message that was not uploaded by the employee as a government record would have been lost during the migration,' a Secret Service official told CNN Tuesday.. 
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Florida Rep. Stephanie Murphy (pictured Tuesday), a Democratic member of the January 6 panel, claims the agency produced an 'initial set of documents' to the House select committee, but excluded the requested texts
But Florida Rep. Stephanie Murphy, a Democratic member of the January 6 panel, claims the agency produced an 'initial set of documents' to the House select committee, but excluded the requested texts.
'We received a letter today that did provide us with a lot of documents and some data. However, we did not receive the additional text messages that we were looking for,' she told MSNBC on Tuesday. 
'They moved ahead with their efforts to migrate the devices and the data, and their process, as explained to us, was simply to leave it to the agent to determine whether or not there was anything on their phones worth saving that was necessary to save for federal records.'
Two sources who worked under Trump-appointed DHS Inspector General Joseph Cuffari (pictured) claim the watchdog did not report findings to Congress in February about the purge deleting nearly all Secret Service text messages from around January 6
'And as a result, today they did not receive any texts from their agents when they made that transition that was flagged for preservation.' 
Members of the House January 6 Committee now say the agency should have done more to preserve its records prior to the migration.
They have cited a January 16, 2021 letter from various congressional committees to multiple agencies - including the FBI and the Department of Homeland Security Office of Intelligence and Analysis - instructing them to preserve all records related to the insurrection.
An appendix to the letter, CNN reports, instructed the head of the intelligence analysis office, Joe Maher, to circulate the request among component agencies - presumably including the Secret Service.
But Anthony Guglielmi, a spokesman for the Secret Service, told CNN the agency conducted an eight-hour search on Thursday of its various internal message systems - and found no record of the letter ever reaching the Secret Service.
Meanwhile, a on Tuesday revealed that the DHS watchdog agency didn't alert Congress in February when it learned about the Secret Service purge that deleted nearly all text messages from around Jan. 6, 2021.
Two whistleblowers within the DHS Inspector General's office told the Post about the previously unreported months-long delay in the watchdog office flagging the erased Secret Service cellphone messages to Congress.
At the time they were working under Inspector General Joseph Cuffari, who was appointed by former President Donald Trump. Cuffari previously served as an advisor to GOP Arizona Governor Doug Ducey and its former Gov. Jan Brewer.
The select committee probing the Capitol riot subpoenaed the Secret Service for agents' texts from around January 6, 2021 that the agency claims were deleted as part of a device-replacement program
The investigation into the missing text messages has now become a criminal probe.
On Wednesday, the DHS Inspector General instructed the Secret Service to halt its internal investigation, saying it is now a criminal matter.
Depending on the findings, the criminal investigation could result in a referral to federal prosecutors.
'To ensure the integrity of our investigation, the USSS must not engage in any further investigative activities regarding the collection and preservation of the evidence referenced above,' DHS Deputy Inspector General Gladys Ayala wrote in a letter to Secret Service Director James Murray on Wednesday evening.
'This includes immediately refraining from interviewing potential witnesses, collecting devices or taking any other action that would interfere with an ongoing criminal investigation,' it adds.
The United States Secret Service has previously confirmed that many texts between agents around the time of the riot were 'erased as part of a device-replacement program.'
It said in a statement Thursday night: 'The insinuation that the Secret Service maliciously deleted text messages following a request is false.
'In fact, the Secret Service has been fully cooperating with the OIG in every respect - whether it be interviews, documents, emails, or texts,' the agency said.
A spokesman said the Secret Service 'began to reset its mobile phones to factory settings as part of a pre-planned, three-month system migration' in January 2021 before the watchdog office opened its probe.
'In that process, data resident on some phones was lost,' they said.
But the Secret Service maintained the IG did not request the communications until late February - at which point the 'migration' had already begun.
The agency also disputed the notion it was stonewalling investigators and dragging out the probe by weeks.
The spokesman added: 'DHS has repeatedly and publicly debunked this allegation, including in response to OIG's last two semi-annual reports to Congress. It is unclear why OIG is raising this issue again.'

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