Tuesday, in response to a subpoena requiring the release of all communications from the day before and the day of the US Capitol attack, the Secret Service provided only one text message to the House committee investigating the incident, according to two sources familiar with the situation.

According to sources, the Secret Service informed the panel that the one text message was the only one responsive to the subpoena. While the agency pledged to do a forensic search for any other text or phone data, it indicated that such messages would likely be unrecoverable.

The texts were deleted due to an agency-wide reset of phones on January 27, 2021; sources said the House investigators — 11 days after Congress initially requested the conversations and two days after agents were warned to back up their phones.

According to the sources, the disclosures were worse than the committee had anticipated. Even though the messages were required for congressional investigations, the panel was disappointed to hear they were gone.

It was a bad day for the Secret Service, which is mandated to maintain records like other executive branch agencies and is now in the crosshairs of the select committee investigating its response to the Capitol attack.

The circumstances surrounding the deletion of Secret Service messages had become essential to the committee's investigation of how agents and leaders planned to evacuate Donald Trump and Mike Pence when violence erupted at the Capitol on January 6.

Last week, the inspector general of the Department of Homeland Security, Joseph Cuffari, the Secret Service's watchdog, disclosed that many text texts from the relevant period had vanished. This sparked the ensuing uproar and subpoena.

In a letter to Congress, the inspector general stated that some Secret Service texts dated 5 and 6 January 2021 were deleted as part of a "device replacement program" and suggested that the agency was obstructing his inquiry by dragging its feet on the submission of evidence.

According to the Secret Service, the missing texts were deleted as part of a planned agency-wide reset of phones and device replacement. According to one source, agents were instructed to back up data to an internal disk, but this direction appears to have been disregarded.

The chair of the January 6 committee, Bennie Thompson, met with the panel's staff director, David Buckley, and his deputy, Kristin Amerling, hours after receiving the complaint letter from Cuffari, before convening members to request a closed-door briefing from the inspector general.

The Guardian stated the inspector general told the committee, among other things, that the Secret Service's explanation for why the communications went missing kept shifting, causing the panel to issue a subpoena for the texts and after-action reports later that day.

Despite complying with the subpoena and producing thousands of papers relevant to decisions made on the day of the Capitol attack, the Secret Service could not provide a single text message, according to sources.

According to the sources, the Secret Service could not produce any after-action reports because none were conducted. According to sources, according to Cuffari, the agency chose to utilize his study as the after-action report, only for personnel to drag their feet on his probe.

A spokesperson for the Secret Service could not be reached immediately for comment.

The fallout from the missing text message incident and testimony from former Trump aide Cassidy Hutchinson describing a scuffle inside the presidential vehicle on January 6 as Trump attempted to grab the steering wheel has renewed credibility concerns.

According to the Secret Service, the sequence of events was as follows: agents were informed of an upcoming update in December 2020, Congress requested communications on January 16, 2021, agents were reminded to back up data on January 25, and the update was implemented on January 27.

In the reminder, the agents were instructed on "how to save information that they were obligated or desired to preserve so that no relevant data or federal records are lost," but the letter was disregarded, and texts were deleted.

According to sources, House investigators are currently discussing with the inspector general the feasibility of reconstructing the deleted texts, including acquiring specialized software and forensic instruments.

In 2018, the justice department inspector general recovered lost text messages from two senior FBI officers who investigated former presidential candidate Hillary Clinton and Trump and exchanged notes condemning Trump.

On January 6, the US Capitol police were responsible for security at the Capitol; Secret Service personnel led protection details for Trump, Pence, and other executive branch officials throughout Washington.

But Secret Service actions had become a focus for House investigators as they investigate whether and when the agency knew Trump wanted to visit the Capitol and whether it intended to remove Vice President Mike Pence from the complex as rioters attempted to prevent certification of Joe Biden's election victory.

The missing texts are also the subject of a new inquiry, as the National Archives instructed the Secret Service to conduct an internal examination and submit a report within 30 days if any communications were "improperly deleted."