The scandal over the Jan. 6 evidence that was deleted by the Department of Homeland Security is being investigated by a public official that can't be trusted, a CNN panel explained on Friday.
"The embattled inspector general for the Department of Homeland Security first learned of missing Secret Service text messages in May 2021 – months earlier than previously known and more than a year before he alerted the House select committee investigating January 6, 2021, that potentially crucial information may have been erased, according to multiple sources familiar with the matter," CNN reported Friday. "Earlier this month, Secret Service officials told congressional committees that DHS Inspector General Joseph Cuffari, the department’s independent watchdog, was aware that texts had been erased in December 2021. But sources tell CNN, the Secret Service had notified Cuffari’s office of missing text messages in May 2021, seven months earlier."
For analysis, former Trump homeland security advisor Olivia Troye was interviewed by CNN's Jim Sciutto alongside former CIA agent Phil Mudd and government ethics expert Norm Eisen.
"When you work at senior levels in the Trump administration you kind of know where people's loyalties lie," Troye said. "There is a reason that I went very public with my concerns about the Trump administration rather than going through the traditional whistle-blower process, which would have led me to the inspector general's office at DHS. And I'll just say that. There's a level of trust there that you understand."
But Troye suggested there may not be text messages to recover.
"The other part of it is I've got to tell you, being a Trump admin person, most of the administration communicated on encrypted signal apps," she revealed. "A lot of the time these messages were likely disappearing."
Mudd said that Cuffari needs to go.
"This is beyond incompetence," he said. "Any inspector general, whether CIA, FBI, Department of Homeland Security, doesn't work for, say, the head of Homeland Security, they work in essence for the Congress."
"I think the inspector general has to go," he said.
Later he said, "this is not only an issue of professionalism but ethics. It can't happen in government. The people who do this have got to go."
Watch below or at this link.
Olivia Troye www.youtube.com
