(Ken Silva, Headline USA) DHS Inspector General Joseph Cuffari has accused the agency’s leadership of suppressing a damning report that’s expected to reveal the Secret Service’s security failures related to the Jan. 6, 2021, Capitol Hill uprising.
Highly anticipated by conservatives and Trump supporters, the forthcoming DHS IG report is expected to shed light on how incoming Vice President Kamala Harris walked past a pipe bomb to get into the Democratic National Committee, and how people with guns were able to get close to the Capitol. The Secret Service is housed within the DHS.
According to investigative reporter Julie Kelly, the report—entitled USSS Preparation for and Response to the Events of January 6, 2021—has been sitting on Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas’s desk since at least April.
However, DHS leaders have pushed back against Cuffari’s accusations that they’re suppressing his report, according to a June 25 letter from DHS counsel Jonathan Meyer, which was reportedly reviewed by POLITICO.
“The department does not want to withhold the entire report from Congress but does intend to redact ‘security sensitive’ information that might reveal aspects of the Secret Service’s operations.”
As I reported. https://t.co/ZEKDtd0sxd
— Julie Kelly 🇺🇸 (@julie_kelly2) July 31, 2024
“In the letter to Cuffari, Meyer wrote that the DHS watchdog ‘misread’ their intentions,” POLITICO reported Wednesday.
“The department does not want to withhold the entire report from Congress but does intend to redact ‘security sensitive’ information that might reveal aspects of the Secret Service’s operations, Meyer wrote.”
An unnamed DHS official told POLITICO that the inspector general has exclusive authority to determine when to release a report to Congress. Any redactions would be a collaborative effort between the watchdog and department officials, the official reportedly said.
Rep. Barry Loudermilk, chairman of a House subcommittee tasked with a separate investigation into Jan. 6 as well as the now-defunct J6 committee, has also reportedly accused Mayorkas of intentionally holding the release of the report
Loudermilk reportedly said in a recent letter that “the failure to provide an in-depth review of the department’s security planning and operational failures related to January 6 not only raises concerns about the department’s botched planning for former president Trump’s rally in Pennsylvania on July 13, 2024, but it is quite possible that such reports could have prevented the security breakdown that resulted in the near assassination of a former president and presidential candidate.”
Ken Silva is a staff writer at Headline USA. Follow him at twitter.com/jd_cashless.
