James M. Murray was the director of the Secret Service at the time of the January 6th insurrection. It was his responsibility for ensuring that his agency complied with both the provisions of the Federal Records Act as well as with Congress’s request for retention of records. His agency instead destroyed the records, and has offered non-credible explanations for those deletions.
There are multiple possibilities for how the deletions happened. The USSS’s current claim is that the backup responsibility lay with the individual agents. However, all 24 agents complying with an unlawful order — in the wake of a coup, and multiple e-mails requesting that they back up their data — is highly improbable. Another probability is that it was the IT department which was responsible for the transfer of data which made the decision. An accident is unlikely, any IT professional backs up the data and verifies the backups first before doing any wipes of the originals. It is also especially improbable that the backups originally made on January 5th and 6th (AND the backups of those backups) were accidentally deleted. That at least speaks to culpability of the IT department of the Secret Service. The question is whether that IT department took it upon themselves to illegally delete the data, or if they were illegally ordered to delete the data by higher-ups within the agency.
But no matter which of those cases it was, the responsibility still ultimately lies with Director Murray. It is a grand understatement to say it’s an extremely bad look for someone who was in charge of protecting the President to be up to his neck in a conspiracy to cover up an insurrection. It’s an even worse look for that person to casually skate free of responsibility.
It is not enough that Director Murray is retiring at the end of the month. There must be accountability, and that starts at the top. He must be fired before he is allowed to retire, and he must lose his security clearance and his pension, and ultimately, he must face criminal charges.
For the sake of his presidency, Biden must fire Director Murray or else he will appear to be weak, losing respect and credibility. This is something which both those who support Biden wholeheartedly, and those whose support is more tepid, should be able to agree upon.