Jeh Johnson on missing Jan. 6 texts: ‘It does smell’

Former Secretary of Homeland Security Jeh Johnson on Thursday said missing texts from Trump officials on Jan. 6 are problematic.

“At the seniormost levels of those departments I’d have to say, it does smell, it is problematic,” he said during an interview on MSNBC’s Morning Joe.

Morning Joe host Willie Geist had asked the former Obama administration official whether the missing communications “passed the smell test.”

Geist referenced missing texts from the Secret Service, Department of Homeland Security (DHS) and Department of Defense (DOD) “in and around a critical day” when a group of rioters staged an attack on the U.S. Capitol in protest of President Biden’s election victory.

Watchdog group American Oversight disclosed earlier this week that the DOD wiped the phones of top officials after Jan. 6, erasing communications from the date.

The DHS and Secret Service both said that technical processes led to the loss of that day’s text messages.

The Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol has been in the spotlight this summer as the House select committee investigating the insurrection held a series of televised hearings aimed at publicizing evidence linking former President Trump to the deadly riots.

Johnson said that he could understand missing communications on the part of low-level members of the organizations, but on the part of high-level officials they are concerning.

“January 2021 was a moment for the Secret Service of high anxiety, the nation was on high alert, during the midst of a presidential transition and an outgoing president frankly who was unhinged,” he said. “So I am not surprised that in that context the line agents of the secret service who protect us didn’t get the data migration exactly right.”

However, he added: “The higher level folks, that’s a different story, and there needs to be an inspector general investigation in my judgement.”

When asked by host Mika Brzezinski about whether there might have been a directive to wipe phones after the insurrection, Johnson said, “I think that’s possible.”

Johnson added that missing communications had the potential to violate laws like the Federal Records and Freedom of Information Acts, which protect government data from erasure and entitle citizens to information.