If this Washington Post caption is not the most chilling one you’ve read this month, I’d hate to see the one that chilled you more:

Chad Wolf, a former secretary for the Department of Homeland Security, during the America First Policy Institute’s America First Agenda summit in Washington, D.C., US, on Monday, July 25, 2022. The nonprofit think tank was formed last year by former cabinet members and top officials in the Trump administration to create platforms based on his policies.

“To create platforms based on his policies.”   Trump’s policy is simply self-promotion and the corrupt exploitation of everyone else for the profit and glory of himself and his gold-plated brand.  Similar to the GOP party platform for 2020 — whatever the Orange Autocrat wants, baby.

Breaking news:  Joseph V. Caffari, Inspector General of the Department of Homeland Security, Trump-appointee, has been hiding his knowledge of the destruction of evidence of likely crimes for months.  Also implicated in the destruction of January 6th evidence story (although not the cover up), surprisingly, are Trump’s former acting  DHS secretary (Trumpie said he loved acting, can hire and fire ’em at will, no vetting, no pesky Senate advice or consent) Chad Wolf, and another totally like non-corrupt Trump appointee, former acting deputy untersharführer for DHS Ken Cucinelli, all of their texts from that period also, unfortunately, accidentally deleted in the routine “reset”.   America first, baby.

Carol Leonnig reports in the Washington Post:

Text messages for former President Donald Trump’s acting Homeland Security Secretary Chad Wolf and acting deputy secretary Ken Cuccinelli are missing for a key period leading up to the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol, according to four people briefed on the matter and internal emails.

This discovery of missing records for the senior-most homeland security officials, which has not been previously reported, increases the volume of potential evidence that has vanished regarding the time around the Capitol attack.

My man Cuffari doesn’t enter the story til paragraph six, but it’s a pretty good role the tireless watchdog’s got, nonetheless:

The office of Inspector General Joseph V. Cuffari did not press the department leadership at that time to explain why they did not preserve these records, nor seek ways to recover the lost data, according to the four people briefed on the watchdog’s actions. Cuffari also failed to alert Congress to the potential destruction of government records. . .

. . .In a nearly identical scenario to that of the DHS leaders’ texts, the Secret Service alerted Cuffari’s office seven months ago, in December 2021, that the agency had deleted thousands of agents’ and employees’ text messages in an agency-wide reset of government phones. Cuffari’s office did not notify Congress until mid-July, despite multiple congressional committees’ pending requests for these records.

The telephone and text communications of Wolf and Cuccinelli in the days leading up to Jan. 6 could have shed considerable light on Trump’s actions and plans. In the weeks before the attack on the Capitol, Trump had been pressuring both men to help him claim the 2020 election results were rigged and even to seize voting machines in key swing states to try to “re-run” the election.

Hmmm, the coincidences here, all amounting to lost evidence of likely criminal conspiracy among top-ranking Trump loyalists, really are amazing, especially since they all seem so eerily like deliberate destruction of evidence and a hamfisted coverup of that destruction of evidence, during an investigation that evidence is extremely pertinent to.   To a paranoid person it could almost seem like part of a long, seamless pattern of ongoing obstruction of justice.

Obviously:

Neither Cuccinelli nor Wolf responded to requests for comment. DHS’s Office of Inspector General [Cufarri] did not immediately respond to requests for comment.

Wolf and Cuccinelli had remained at DHS as Trump openly challenged the 2020 election results, even though the agency led efforts to help state and local governments safeguard the integrity of the election results.

Starting in late December, numerous DHS intelligence units across the country were warning of extremely worrisome chatter in white nationalist and pro-Trump social media platforms that were promoting coming armed to Trump’s Jan. 6 rally and using violence to block Biden from becoming president.

In late December, Trump railed in a Cabinet meeting that his secretaries were failing to properly help him investigate fraud that had corruptly “given” the election to Joe Biden, but cited unsubstantiated claims. Trump fired Christopher Krebs, the former director of the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency, in a tweet after Krebs countered Trump’s claims of widespread election fraud, and complained that Wolf should have moved faster to force Krebs out. . .

. . . Wolf had resigned five days after the attack on the Capitol, and cited “recent events” as well as legal rulings questioning his legitimacy to continue leading the department as an acting secretary for 14 months. . .

. . . A Government Accountability Office report in 2020 found that Wolf and Cuccinelli were ineligible to serve in their positions because their appointments had not followed the proper order of succession, an issue the GAO referred to the DHS Office of Inspector General. [that would be our boy Joseph V. Cuffari, for those keeping score at home]

Oh, my God!  Is there no end to the unfounded partisan insinuations against poor Mr. Trump?!  Here is the rest of Carol Leonnig’s scabrous story:  https://wapo.st/3PQ5Dic