Former federal prosecutor and current MSNBC legal analyst Glenn Kirschner tore into Secret Service agents who have “lawyered up” amid the January 6 hearings and a criminal probe over deleted texts.

After news broke last week that Secret Service text messages from Jan. 5 and Jan. 6, 2021 were deleted by the agency after they were told to preserve them, the January 6 Committee demanded all relevant evidence from Secret Service Director James Murray.

This week, the Department of Homeland Security opened a criminal investigation into the deletions, and instructed Secret Service to cease all internal probes into the matter. Key Jan. 6 member Zoe Lofgren also announced that Secret Service personnel have retained private counsel, including Robert Engel and the driver of then-President Donald Trump‘s SUV, as well as Tony Ornato.

On Saturday morning’s edition of MSNBC’s The Katie Phang Show, host Katie Phang asked Kirschner to weigh in on the “message” being sent by these agents lawyering up:

KATIE PHANG: What do you think about the fact that individual agents as high up as Tony Ornato have now lawyered up. Now, getting counsel is your right. You can do that. But what message is that sending to you about the absence of evidence? There’s none. There’s no phone call logs. There’s no photographs of the president now. There’s no text messages. And it sounds really suspect this idea about this phone data migration, the fact that people are getting lawyers at the Secret Service, what does that tell you?

GLENN KIRSCHNER: Yeah, Katie, listen, I embrace anybody’s 6th Amendment right to counsel, just like I embrace anybody’s Fifth Amendment right against self-incrimination. These are important constitutional rights that we have, at least until the Supreme Court chooses to take them away. But there is an incongruity here when a law enforcement agency like the Secret Service, lawyers up, or members of the Secret Service lawyer up because they are afraid of the consequences to come, or just the questions that will be put to them about why they erased their text messages.

And you’re right, Katie, I worked criminal cases with the Secret Service, including a case where a senator had his cell phone stolen and we had to use technology to track the thief through the city until we found him, caught him and put him on trial and convicted him. And here is the thing that really gets me so frustrated. The Secret Service is the premier law enforcement organization when it comes to investigating cyber crime. When I had cell phones or computers seized as part of my criminal investigations and I needed forensic searches done on them, particularly if evidence had been deleted and needed to be retrieved.

I didn’t go down to the FBI lab at Quantico. I went to the United States Secret Service Forensic Sciences Division, and they’re the ones who retrieved deleted information off of cell phones and computers. So now what? They can’t retrieve their own deleted information? I’m not buying it. I believe there’s adequate predication, that is, enough evidence to open a criminal probe. And if the Secret Service did nothing wrong, they should welcome that criminal probe.

Watch above via MSNBC.

The post MSNBC’s Glenn Kirschner Rips Secret Service Agents ‘Lawyering Up’: ‘Afraid Of The Consequences To Come’ first appeared on Mediaite.

from Mediaite https://ift.tt/UVdx6j5