Trump’s Homeland Security Inspector General appears to be in deep, deep trouble
When the news broke that the Secret Service had conveniently deleted its January 6th-related text messages after Congress formally requested them, the Homeland Security Inspector General announced a criminal probe into the matter. But now it appears he may have merely been trying to cover his own tracks, if new reporting about his actions is correct.
The Inspector General knew all the way back in May of 2021 – more than a year ago – that the Secret Service text messages were deleted and missing, but kept this information from Congress for more than a year, according to a new CNN report. Worse, the Inspector General actually shut down an investigation into the text messages earlier this year, according to the Washington Post. So what is even going on?
It’s clear that the Homeland Security Inspector General has been trying to bury this scandal for a long time. The question is why. It was specifically his job to investigate and expose this scandal. Instead he’s reportedly been trying to keep the scandal from being properly investigated, and he’s been trying to keep Congress from being able to properly investigate this scandal.
Has the Inspector General been trying to cover up this Secret Service January 6th scandal because he was in on it to begin with? Has he been trying to cover it up because someone has been blackmailing him? Has he simply lost his mind? Is some other unknown individual within Homeland Security or the Secret Service the real villain, and these latest news reports are aimed at scapegoating the Inspector General?
For reference, the current Homeland Security Inspector General was appointed by Donald Trump – always a concern – but he was then vetted and confirmed by the full Senate on a voice vote. This means that no one in the Senate found any red flags that jumped out about the guy, and that no Senators ultimately opposed his confirmation. Trump had a habit of putting his loyalists into “Acting” roles so as to avoid vetting or scrutiny, but that wasn’t the case here.
It’s still not entirely clear what’s going on here, but it is clear that a lot is going on here. If this latest reporting is correct, the Homeland Security Inspector General is guilty of obstruction of Congress and perhaps obstruction of justice – which would be a stunning development for the person who was appointed specifically to investigate corruption within his own agency. This is before getting to the question of what the deleted text messages really said, and why the Inspector General or anyone else would go to such great lengths to try to bury those text messages.
In any case, the January 6th Committee has shown impressive investigative prowess up to this point, and we have a feeling they’re going to get to the bottom of this Homeland Security / Secret Service scandal eventually. And given that the DOJ has a habit of launching investigations that we only find out about months later, we won’t be surprised at all if we later learn that the DOJ is already investigating this as a criminal matter. At this point it’s impossible to explain all of this away due to mere incompetence or negligence; someone somewhere willfully committed a criminal act.
