Steve Bannon braces for contempt trial as Jan 6 panel to receive deleted Secret Service texts by Tuesday

US Secret Service says text messages were erased as part of a ‘device-replacement programme’

Jury selection is set to take place in the trial of Steve Bannon who served as a one-time adviser to former president Donald Trump on Monday as the House select committee probing the Jan 6 capitol riots said it expects to receive deleted Secret Service text messages from 5 January and 6 January by Tuesday.

Mr Bannon, indicted on two counts of criminal contempt of Congress, has been accused of defying a subpoena from the house committee which asked for his records and testimony.

The former White House chief strategist from the Trump administration is going to testify after refusing for months to cooperate in the trial with the House committee investigating the Capitol insurrection.

This comes shortly after his lawyer Robert Costello said that the change behind Mr Bannon’s position was due to relinquishment of his executive privilege claim by Mr Trump frm preventing the testimony.

Each charge against the 68-year-old carries a minimum of 30 days in prison and as long as a year behind bars.

The committee is also set to receive the deleted text exchange between the United States Secret Service on Tuesday as chairman Bennie Thompson said a subpoena seeking these records of “text messages from January 5 and 6, 2021, that were reportedly erased and reiterated three previous requests from congressional committees for information” has been issued.

The text messages were erased as part of a “device-replacement programme”, Mr Thompson said in the statement, citing the US Secret Service.

According to the statement, the Secret Service “began to reset its mobile phones to factory settings as part of a pre-planned three-month system migration” and it was during that process, “data resident on some phones was lost”.

But the US Secret Service said that none of the texts sought by the department of homeland security office of inspector general had been lost during the migration activity, the chairman noted in his statement.

“Accordingly, the select committee seeks the relevant text messages, as well as any after action reports that have been issued in any and all divisions of the USSS pertaining or relating in any way to the events of January 6, 2021,” the committee chief wrote.

The committee will also present testimony from fresh witnesses this week at Thursday’s public hearing, the members of the committee said on Sunday.

This comes shortly after the inspector general for the department of homeland security informed the panel and lawmakers that many of the texts were erased as part of the device replacement program even after the inspector general had asked for them as part of his inquiry into the events leading to the Capitol riots.

The Secret Service has contended the findings presented by the inspector general and said that the data on some phones had been “lost” as part of the cited system migration in January last year but those were non pertinent to the ongoing inquiry.

The exercise was already underway before the USSS was intimated by the inspector general. The USSS did not “maliciously” delete text messages, it said.

Additionally, committee members have said that the prime-time hearing on Thursday will also offer the most compelling evidence yet of Mr Trump’s “dereliction of duty” on the day of insurrector on 6 January.

The new witnesses are expected to detail the former president’s failure to control the angry mob storming the Capitol building and leading to historical riots.

Representative Adam Kinzinger from Illinois, a member of the House committee investigating the riot, who will help lead Thursday’s session with Rep Elaine Luria from Virginia said: “This is going to open people’s eyes in a big way”.

“The president did not do anything,” he said.