The mystery of the missing text messages from January 6th hasn’t unraveled just yet. Since several federal agencies admitted that they hadn’t retained any text messages from key figures surrounding the attack on the Capitol complex, officials have taken steps to prevent it from happening again.
Horses, barn door, lock, yada yada yada.
“mistakes were made”
Laws and rules don’t matter for fascist/authoritarians. They will ignore the rules in the future, as they have ignored them in the past.
And capitols were invaded.
I am not one of the people who believe the missing texts were an accident. The coverup started in earnest on January 7 and must have been conducted by officials who wanted to retain their jobs or possibly their freedom. Until the Biden people took over they had free reign to do what they needed to cover their asses.
These reforms are meaningless. Future corrupt high ranking officials will always be able to cover their tracks. What we need is to make sure officials in future administrations are honest and committed to the people of the United States and not some political party.
“The Department of Homeland Security also announced in August that it would stop wiping top agency officials’ and political appointees’ cell phones without backing them up, and that they would conduct a 30-day review of its data retention policies.”
Why would they have ever done otherwise??? How did they not conceive that these messages were official communications/records needing preservation?
What kind of crazy world IS this??? It’s like they’re still ‘figuring this computer stuff out’… 
Nor am I, it was as intentional as can be.
You are not alone, Ron! 
They need 30 days to say, “Welp, we’re supposed to back everything up?”
I disagree! If they erase their messages, they might face a 30-day internal review of policies!
I still find it hard to believe no one on that text thread has offered to testify about what was on the texts to the “best of their recollection”. It’s not like their memories were magically wiped out.
Well unless they were all in on something sinister, so to speak.
Trump World: Norm Destroyers.
I want to know how many phones were wiped.
Only USSS teams in DC? Did this happen in Baltimore / Pittsburgh / Chicago?
How many days / weeks of texts were erased? Just the week of Jan 6? Or weeks and months of messages?
As if it was about the kind of footwear appropriate in the beach club.
The way this was almost celebrated in certain corners was an embarrassment and should be a source of shame for the ignoramuses who did it.
I am, however, not marking the days/years until that happens.
Homogeneous-group-based/Cult-basedAuthoritarian individuals have very rigorous standards,
for the Out-Group, not themselves
Cue: little pissant gnomes like Lindsey Graham contorting to “explain” the latest GOP atrocity
‘One rule for me, another for thee,’ seems to be the only item on the reactionaries’ missing platform.
I’m struck by how blithely people sweepingly declare that present and future authoritarians are all-powerful and cannot be opposed, how they never make mistakes, how they never weaken and fall. People seem almost to find a strange satisfaction in it. And yet it’s really not quite that simple. In 1942 SS Obergruppenfuhrer Reinhard Heydrich held a meeting in the Berlin suburb of Wannsee meant to coordinate the Final Solution among various administrative departments of the Nazi government. Everyone understood that all Europe’s Jews would be rounded up, taken by rail to the Nazi-occupied part of Poland, and murdered there. Notes of the conference, now known as the Wannsee Protocol, were distributed to the participants. As the war was ending most tried to destroy their copy, being as it was one of the most damning and horrifying documents ever made. But a copy survived and was used as evidence in the Nuremberg trials. Conspiracies tend to come to light, and no regime has ever been omnipotent. So let’s not be the jaded hipsters of this crisis in our democracy and sigh that it’s no use. That isn’t being knowing. It’s being naive and feckless. It’s really not what we need right now.
“passive voice was used”
(And “wives of Supreme Court Justices were involved”)
For one thing, we have the capacity to grow and improve as a society. I think that this excuse will not work again. If a big bunch of texts go missing at some point in the future, we have this 2020 debacle as a backstop. We can point to the changes that were supposed to be made to say, you can’t just say “Our bad,” and walk away as if nothing happened. Your department made specific policies to prevent this from happening, so if it did happen again, heads need to roll. And if you won’t hold your people accountable, another branch of government will be empowered to step in and do it for you.