Jan. 6 text messages of senior Pentagon officials wiped clean, court filings show

The Pentagon wiped government-issued phones of senior defense and military officials in the Trump administration, deleting any text messages from key witnesses to the events surrounding the January 6, 2021 attack on the US Capitol, according to court filings.

The unusual act by the Department of Defense was brought to light when American Oversight, a watchdog group, filed a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit against the Pentagon, demanding Jan.6 records from senior officials, including former acting Secretary of Defense Chris Miller, former chief of staff Kash Patel, and former Secretary of the Army Ryan McCarthy.

Miller, Patel and McCarthy have all been viewed as crucial witnesses given the key positions they held in the final days of the administration of President Donald Trump, who encouraged his supporters to march on the Capitol and disrupt the certification of Joe Biden’s electoral victory.

All three were involved in the Pentagon's response to sending National Guard troops to the Capitol as Trump supporters laid siege to the building and ransacked offices of lawmakers.   

The text messages from that day “were not preserved, and therefore could not be searched,” according to a federal court filing that cites statements by the Defense Department and Army.

The government's acknowledgement that the text messages have been wiped clean is the latest blow to efforts to bring transparency to the events of January 6. It also prompted American Oversight to ask Attorney General Merrick Garland to open an investigation into the Pentagon’s “failure to preserve the communications.”

The Department of Homeland Security is also under pressure for the apparent loss of messages from the cellphones of Secret Service agents and officials that day. In its letter to Garland, American Oversight said the DHS’s inspector general is currently conducting a criminal investigation into the deletion.  

“The apparent deletion of records from January 6th by multiple agencies bolsters the need for a cross-agency investigation into the possible destruction of federal records,” the group’s executive director Heather Sawyer wrote Garland.

The deleted text messages could have proved crucial in the ongoing congressional investigation into the Capitol riot.

Last week, the House select committee investigating the Jan. 6 events revealed videotaped testimony by Miller, during which the former acting defense secretary contradicted Trump’s claims that he had requested that at least 10,000 National Guard troops be deployed in Washington before the riots.

“I was never given any direction or order or knew of any plans of that nature,” Miller said in his testimony. “There was no order from the president.”

Trump’s failure to take any action to stop the attack on the Capitol by his supporters was the focus of a July 21 public hearing by the House committee.

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