Friday open thread: It's always the coverup

News broke yesterday that someone at the Secret Service wiped clean all text messages on agency phones from the dates of January 5 and 6, 2021. These texts were deleted after they had been requested by the inspector general of the Department of Homeland Security, which oversees the Secret Service.

"First, the Department notified us that many US Secret Service text messages from January 5 and 6, 2021, were erased as part of a device-replacement program. The USSS erased those text messages after OIG requested records of electronic communications from the USSS, as part of our evaluation of events at the Capitol on January 6," the letter from DHS IG Joseph Cuffari stated.

"Second, DHS personnel have repeatedly told OIG inspectors that they were not permitted to provide records directly to OIG and that such records had to first undergo review by DHS attorneys," Cuffari added. "This review led to weeks-long delays in OIG obtaining records and created confusion over whether all records had been produced."

Now, you don't have to be knowledgeable in laws governing the safeguarding of government records to know this is not good. The fact that the texts erased were from the time of the insurrection raises multiple alarm bells. The most charitable explanation is carelessness. But of course, that does not fly. It beggars belief that it just so happens that someone recklessly erased those messages. 

Of course, you can add two other facts to this ridiculous claim: the sudden "retirement" of the agency's head after only three years on the job, and the relationship between Donald Trump and agent Anthony Ornato, who, against all protocol, was seconded to the Trump White House as an assistant, and was allowed to return to duty with the Secret Service after Joe Biden's inauguration.

You don't have to be a conspiracy theorist to feel a bit of fire on your hair follicles from this episode. Someone is covering up what happened on January 6th in the agency. How they thought that they could get away with this is another indication of the hubris which suffused everyone associated with that treasonous regime.

January 6th is a wound which will leave scars on our body politic for years. But as with all such conspiracies, it's always the coverup which ensnares its participants. That's the difference between a true conspiracy and a conspiracy theories. Conspiracies do exist; but 99% of the time they are uncovered, as this one has been. And the downfall of the conspirators is hastened by their desperate attempts to cover it up. It happened to Richard Nixon in Watergate. It happened to Ronald Reagan with Iran-Contra. And it's happening to Trump and his buffoons now. A true conspiracy requires too many moving parts. Too many people know about it, and somehow, some way, it will leak. The truth will out, and you can't erase your tracks. If there was alien technology at Area 51, we would have found out decades ago. Because someone of good repute would have come out with documents and evidence. Conspiracy theories thrive because any refutation is batted down by new lines of argument. Real conspiracies are finite systems, and will eventually crack. 

As the unraveling of this plot continues apace, more information will come out which will shock us. That's the nature of conspiracy: it can never keep its secrets. That will be our saving grace.