The U.S. Secret Service is facing scrutiny amid ongoing allegations about the “accidental” deletion of important text messages from January 5 and 6, 2021, and MSNBC’s Lawrence O’Donnell is not buying the agency’s explanation for the erasure.
During a segment on his show, the host said the Secret Service deleted “the most important text messages in their history” and suggested the agency’s director James Murray could be behind the unprecedented action while accusing him of being a “Trump guy.”
The host quoted an NBC News report that stated the Secret Service had been told at least three times to preserve text messages and communications on the agency’s phones, citing a senior Secret Service official.
“The senior Secret Service official said it was James Murray’s responsibility to make sure all Secret Service texts sent and received on January 6 were preserved. And he did not do that,” O’Donnell said.
Don't Miss
Murray was appointed to lead the Secret Service by Trump in April 2019.
“We know that Donald Trump was not going to give that job to anyone who did not clearly pledge loyalty to Donald Trump,” O’Donnell said. “So we know that James Murray is a Trump guy in every sense important to Donald Trump or Donald Trump would not have promoted him to director of the Secret Service in April of 2019.”
O’Donnell went on to ask if Murray had done “a service” for Trump by “overseeing the deletion of all the Secret Service text messages on January 6.”
The National Archives has directed the Secret Service to investigate the potential “unauthorized deletion” of text messages and issue a report in 30 days.
Watch O’Donnell’s segment below:
