Secret Service has recently provided January 6 committee additional 1.5 million communications
By Whitney Wild and Paul LeBlanc, CNN
The United States Secret Service has, in the last two weeks, given the House select committee investigating the January 6, 2021, attack on the US Capitol nearly 1.5 million communications from the lead-up to the attack, including emails and planning documents, according to an agency spokesman.
The data dump represents another large volume of records provided to congressional investigators as the panel nears its final planned public hearing.
CNN previously reported the Secret Service gave hundreds of thousands of records to both the Department of Homeland Security inspector general and the January 6 committee.
The latest batch of records, which was first reported by NBC News, does not include the text messages lost to a data migration that prompted a criminal probe by the inspector general.
The DHS appointed a special counsel to review materials from the Secret Service to ensure the agency could satisfy the January 6 committee’s probe without running afoul of the IG’s criminal inquiry, which demanded the Secret Service halt its investigation into missing texts.
CNN has previously reported that the committee has received around 800,000 pages of materials from the Secret Service in response to a subpoena since July, as the committee continues to investigate why certain text messages from Secret Service agents went missing from January 5 and 6, 2021.
Democratic Rep. Bennie Thompson of Mississippi, who chairs the committee, has described the trove of documents the Secret Service provided as “significant information.”
The committee’s hearing this week comes more than two months since the panel’s last public appearance. Throughout June and July, the committee held a series of eight news-packed hearings to reveal key themes of its investigation so far.
Members have promised that the hearing this week will reveal new information that it uncovered and has not previously disclosed.
This hearing could be the last hearing until after the November midterm elections. Thompson has said that the committee could release an interim report on some of its initial findings before the midterms. The panel is still working toward presenting a final report by the end of the year.
The-CNN-Wire
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CNN’s Annie Grayer, Zachary Cohen and Sara Murray contributed to this report.
