EDITORIAL: Secret Service says the dog ate its homework

The Secret Service has an understandable reputation for playing it close to the vest, but the agency is not above transparency requirements. Its failure to provide a House committee with text messages from phones used by agents around the time of the Jan. 6 riot merits more scrutiny.

Last week, the inspector general for the Department of Homeland Security told Congress that some Secret Service phone records had been purged as part of a routine phone system update. The watchdog had requested the data as part of an internal probe of how Homeland Security responded to the chaos that day.

The revelation prompted the Jan. 6 committee to subpoena missing text messages from agents’ phones sent on Jan. 5 and Jan. 6, 2021. But a spokesman for the Secret Service this week said the requested texts are “probably not recoverable,” The New York Times reported. The agency maintains that “the erased records were not related to Jan. 6 or any related inquiries,” the Times revealed, but “take our word for it” is hardly a slogan that promotes accountability.

Secret Service agents assigned to Vice President Mike Pence and President Donald Trump presumably had front-row seats to the intricacies of how those men reacted and behaved as the events unfolded.

One former White House aide previously testified that she had heard secondhand about a confrontation between Mr. Trump and his security detail, although the Secret Service denied that version of events. But the fact that the agency is unable to provide the text messages in question only raises more questions about its motivations and credibility.

“Almost nothing about this episode makes sense,” Paul Rosenzweig, a consultant who served as senior counsel in the investigation of President Bill Clinton, wrote for The Atlantic. “At best, the loss of these texts is evidence of astonishing incompetence at an agency that is supposed to be a sophisticated cyberactor, charged with investigating cybercrimes. At worst, the parade of errors is indicative of darker motivations.”

The development casts a strong odor and is another black eye for an agency that has endured a long line of scandals over the past decade. The Homeland Security inspector general has announced a criminal investigation into the matter. If government records were indeed destroyed with nefarious intent, those involved deserve to face the consequences.

In the meantime, there’s nothing stopping the House committee from seeking the sworn testimony of the agents whose text messages have so conveniently been lost to the ether.