Just earlier today, we reported on the bombshell development from NBC News’ Pete Williams and Julia Ainsley, revealing that the inspector general’s probe into the Department of Homeland Security regarding missing Secret Service text messages hailing from January 5th and 6th, 2021, has now officially turned into a criminal investigation, after reports revealed the text messages being sought by the J6 House Select Committee were conveniently deleted after their request for the evidence was already made.
Now, Rep. Zoe Lofgren, who serves as a member of the January 6th House Select Committee, made an appearance on MSNBC this afternoon, where she went on to reveal that the Secret Service has officially retained its own outside attorney following the bombshell news of potential criminal charges against them for blatantly failing to preserve documents, a clearcut demand made of all federal government agencies.
MSNBC’s Nicolle Wallace specifically questioned if the outside legal counsel was pre-existing or if the Secret Service hired the private attorney recently, on the heels of the new development. Lofgren said she believes the counsel is new.
“I can’t give you an exact day, but it is new,” she said.
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Former FBI official Frank Figliuzzi weighed in on the topic and called the development a significant piece of information.
“So, timing is everything, right?” he said. “Everyone has the right to counsel, of course, but the timing is important here because if they didn’t invoke the right to counsel, they didn’t. If they didn’t acquire counsel because they didn’t think anything was wrong and they weren’t under criminal scrutiny and they did it after figuring out ‘we’re in trouble here’ — and we don’t know when they heard that the DHS inquiry had turned criminal … that would be significant.”
“So, I get it if you’re under criminal inquiry, you should retain counsel, but if they retained counsel earlier than knowing that DHS had formally opened a criminal case, that means they thought they did something potentially unlawful to begin with and that’s very significant.”
See the MSNBC discussion here:
Featured image via screen capture
