In an excuse right up there with the “dog ate my homework,” the FBI admitted that it “failed to preserve” thousands of texts exchanged between anti-Trump FBI employees Peter Strzok and Lisa Page, who were members of Robert Mueller’s team.
The shocking revelation was made in a letter from the Department of Justice (which oversees the FBI) to the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee. In the letter, top DOJ attorney Stephen Boyd cited technical lapses for the failure to preserve five months of texts.
“The FBI’s technical system for retaining text messages sent and received on FBI mobile devices failed to preserve text messages for Mr. Strzok and Ms. Page,” Boyd wrote (via the Daily Caller).
Boyd cited “misconfiguration issues related to rollouts, provisioning, and software upgrades that conflicted with the FBI’s collection capabilities” for the failure of the FBI — arguably the top intelligence agency in the world — to preserve thousands of texts exchanged on the government-issued phones of FBI employees Peter Strzok and Lisa Page.
In something that smells like a cover-up, Boyd explained: “The result was that data that should have been automatically collected and retained for long-term storage and retrieval was not collected.”
DOJ finds all missing FBI texts: ‘This is so much bigger than Watergate’
The missing texts were exchanged between Strzok — deputy director of the FBI Counterintelligence Division — and Page, an FBI attorney, between December 14, 2016 and May 17, 2017. The two had an affair while they worked together on the Robert Mueller team investigating Russian meddling in the 2016 election.
In the 50,000 anti-Trump, pro-Hillary texts that were uncovered this fall, Strzok and Page mocked President Trump as “an idiot” and a “menace” and discussed what they should do to keep him from defeating their heroine, Hillary Clinton.
Special counsel Robert Mueller removed Strzok from his team after discovering his anti-Trump bias. But both Strzok and Page still work for the FBI.
And now, five months of texts are suddenly missing.
Strzok oversaw the Trump-Russia probe and also supervised the Hillary Clinton email investigation.
Strzok was also responsible for changing the language in former FBI director James Comey’s letter to characterize Clinton’s actions as “extremely careless,” which is less damning than the original “grossly negligent” phraseology Comey had used.
In addition, Strzok conducted the FBI interview of Clinton over the Fourth of July weekend in 2016. During those interviews, the former Secretary of State claimed she did not know that the “C” stamped across her classified government emails stood for “Confidential.”
The Robert Mueller investigation has come under fire amid epic screw-ups that suggest the special counsel’s team is too partisan and unprofessional to do their jobs properly.
“The senior levels of the FBI have been infected with an intractable bias that seem to favor Hillary Clinton and work against President Trump,” Republican Congressman Matt Gaetz told Fox News. “The Mueller investigation has been proven to be biased. The American people know it’s biased.”
What’s more, the Mueller investigation has failed to provide any evidence of collusion after a year-long probe. Congressman Gaetz, an attorney, said it’s time for Mueller to put up or shut up.
“It’s time for Bob Mueller to put up or shut up. If there’s evidence of collusion, let’s see it!” Gaetz told Fox News. “If there’s not, let’s move on.”
On Sunday, Congressman Jim Jordan demanded a second special counsel probe, this time to investigate the FBI. “The time for a second special counsel is now,” he tweeted.
Congressman Mark Meadows agreed with Jim Jordan, tweeting: “If it wasn’t already clear we need a second special counsel, it’s abundantly clear now.”
Trump fires back after Cryin’ Chuck Schumer reneges on border wall: No wall, no DACA!
Unreal. We've been asking for the remaining text messages between anti-Trump FBI agents (and former Mueller team members), Peter Strzok and Lisa Page. The FBI now says the texts are "missing."
If it wasn't already clear we need a second special counsel, it's abundantly clear now https://t.co/nvpNY4s4QV
— Mark Meadows (@MarkMeadows) January 22, 2018
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Samantha Chang is a senior staff writer for BizPac Review. She is a financial editor and lawyer based in New York City.
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