Comment The Department of Homeland Security’s top watchdog rejected calls from top Democratic lawmakers to recuse himself from an investigation into the deletion of text messages exchanged between Secret Service agents during the Jan. 6, 2021 attack on Capitol Hill, prompting fresh rebukes from lawmakers on Tuesday. Inspector General Joseph Koufari said in a letter released Tuesday that he would not release investigative documents or allow his top lieutenants to appear for transcripts of interviews before House committees investigating the attack, nor would he provide documents requested by lawmakers. . Cuffari said forcing him to step down has “no legal basis” and would “undermine the very independence Congress has established for Inspectors General,” according to the letter he sent to the House oversight committees. on August 8. The House Homeland Security and Oversight and Reform committees released his letter on Tuesday, along with their response accusing Cuffari of delaying their investigation into one of the worst attacks in US history. Cuffari surprised lawmakers last month with a letter accusing the Secret Service of deleting text messages from the time of the attack after he had requested them. The Homeland Security watchdog has previously been accused of misleading investigators, according to the report. But committee members soon learned that Cuffari and his staff had known about the missing messages for months, failed to notify Congress or the Homeland Security secretary, and canceled steps to recover them. Lawmakers said the messages could contain critical information because Secret Service agents shadow presidents and other top officials and may have witnessed their actions that day. “Your obstruction of the Committees’ investigations is unacceptable, and your excuses for this noncompliance appear to reflect a fundamental misunderstanding of Congress’s authority and your duties as Inspector General,” Representative Carolyn B. Maloney, chairwoman of the Committee on Oversight and House Reform and Bennie G. Thompson, chairman of the January 6 Committee and the House Homeland Security Committee, wrote to Cuffari on Tuesday. “If you continue to refuse to comply with our requests, we will have no choice but to consider alternative measures to ensure your compliance,” they wrote. The commissions would not specify what those steps might be, a spokeswoman said. Ahead of the committee’s next hearing on Jan. 6, members asked the Secret Service to turn over the allegedly deleted text messages from the Capitol attack. (Video: The Washington Post) Cuffari was nominated by former President Donald Trump, whose supporters stormed the Capitol in a failed attempt to overturn the 2020 presidential election. The lawmakers said in a letter that Cuffari’s refusal is part of a pattern of resistance to their efforts to delve into complaints about his office. They said they have written to him three times since May to request documents related to allegations that his office “censored findings of domestic abuse and sexual harassment” by DHS workers, his failure to promptly notify Congress of the missing Secret Service documents and new reports that he documented his “repeated failures” to retrieve the messages. Cuffari is also under investigation by an independent watchdog, the Board of Inspectors General for Integrity and Effectiveness. People familiar with that investigation also accused Cuffari of refusing to release some records and blocking interviews with staff, delaying that investigation, which has now lasted more than 15 months. In his Aug. 8 letter to the committees, Cuffari said he conducted investigations on Jan. 6 in coordination with the inspectors general at the Departments of Justice, Defense and Interior, as well as executive and legislative agencies. He noted that he has complained to Congress about difficulties getting information from DHS since last year and blamed “DHS resistance” for delays. He said he has published a review of the Jan. 6 attack and is working on two more. “When these two ongoing reviews are complete, we will be happy to provide updates on them,” he wrote. “To my knowledge, I am the only Inspector General, to date, who has publicly reported access issues and delays related to January 6th to Congress,” he wrote. But Cuffari refused to provide documents that he said could jeopardize his ongoing investigation. He launched a criminal investigation in July and ordered the Secret Service to halt efforts to recover the missing messages. The agency said the messages were lost as part of a planned change to their phones. Watchdog launches criminal investigation into lost Secret Service messages “Sharing information about ongoing criminal investigations could affect potential witnesses or others who may be involved in the investigative process,” Cuffari wrote. “To protect the integrity of our work and maintain our independence, we do not share information about current affairs, such as the information you requested in your letters. “Similarly, we do not authorize our staff to participate in off-the-record interviews with your committee on these current issues,” he wrote. “Once these matters are concluded, we will consider a new request for documents, updates or interview transcripts.” But the committees disputed Cuffari’s claim that he is unable to share records with lawmakers and said they were concerned his office was using delay tactics to prevent the committee from investigating the reasons for the delays. “We are concerned that you are now improperly using a criminal investigation that you only recently announced to withhold evidence from Congress about your misconduct and mismanagement,” they wrote. They said Cuffari failed for more than a year to notify them of the Secret Service text messages and in some cases “gave the impression that the access issues had been resolved.” When Cuffari notified the Homeland Security Committee on July 15 about the missing Secret Service text messages, they wrote, “it was 14 months after you learned the text messages were not available.” They also said Cuffari failed to disclose that his office told DHS in July 2021 that it “no longer needed the text messages” and that the text messages of Trump’s former DHS Secretary Chad Wolf and Acting Deputy Ken Cuccinelli were also unavailable .
