plus president biden meets with the saudi crown prince and says he did raise the murder of washington post journalist jamal khashoggi. now the crown prince is firing back. plus more than half the country is seeing high community spread of coronavirus. and now some cities are reconsidering mask mandates. newsroom starts right now. good morning. it is saturday, july 16th. i m kristin fisher. i can t believe it s already july 16th. we re halfway through the month. it s flowna by. this whole year has flown by. i m boris sanchez. we start with new revelations, the january 6th committee digging into reports that the secret service deleted text messages sent the day before and during the insurrection. the committee issued a subpoena to the secret service yesterday after meeting with the inspector general of the department of homeland security. we should note this is the first time the committee has subpoenaed an agency in the executive branch. and earlier this week a gov
yesterday and according to a source, he told the panel the secret service has not fully cooperated with his probe. the secret service denies deleting any texts maliciously. the subpoena is the first time the panel has publicly targeted an executive branch agency. cnn s katelyn polantz joins us now. what more do we know about 0 how this subpoena came about, the response, and what are the other things the secret service is saying? reporter: right, fred, so this is a very fast-moving story. we only learned there may be a problem or confusion around these secret service text messages from january 5th and 6th just three days ago, july 13th. that is when the department of homeland security inspector general which is an independent watchdog conducting its own look into the secret service handling of january 6th, they flagged for capitol hill that there were erased or missing text messages from the secret service and they were this inspector general was quite concerned that they
so let s walk through what happened. three days ago, july 13th, the dhs, the inspector general which was looking into the secret service handling of january 6, they notified capitol hill to say that there were text messages that were erased as part of a data migration process that dhs was doing and that present there were missing text messages from secret service phones on january 5th and 6th. the dhs inspector general was clearly very frustrated with this and felt like they weren t getting the information they wanted out of the secret service for their investigation. told capitol hill then that watch dog, the chief there, did brief all nine members of house select committee about this yesterday for several hours. the committee members emerged from that meeting very concerned. here is what congresswoman zoe lofgren said afterwards. here she is. i will say that the explanation that you have to factory re-set and eliminate your data without backing up your data just seems i
joining us now. so what more could you tell us. reporter: well this story is fast moving. it is only 72 hours since we first learned there was a problem at the secret service where text messages from january 5th and 6th on agents phones were erased or lost because of a data migration tech process that that agency had ongoing around the 6th, this pivotal event. but here is the story of how this played out over the last couple of days. so the department of homeland security inspector general, a watch dog that would look into the secret service related to january 6 was frustrated about not getting information from them in this investigation. and that included the i.g. learning there were erased text messages. this i.g. at dhs notified capitol hill three days ago this was a problem, that is how the public and the news organizations covering the story first learned about it and then the inspector general went and briefed all nine members of the house select committee yesterday.
january 5th and 6th, until 72 hours ago, when the inspector general over that agency announced in a letter to capitol hill that they had learned the texts were missing, that there was a data migration in process at dhs at the secret service to caused the erasure of some text messages from secret service phones. the inspector general announced that to capitol hill. the january 6th committee received a briefing from that watchdog agent on friday. all nine members sat for several hours, trying to figure out what happened here with the secret service, what was going on in this other investigation. and the committee members emerged from that briefing quite concerned. here is representative zoe lofgren yesterday after that briefing. i will say that the explanation that you have to factory reset and eliminate your data without backing up your data just seems i m skeptical. i mean, i wouldn t do that. the argument about when the request was made is largely irrelevant. the secret