By Chuck Ross
The FBI “failed to preserve” five
months’ worth of text messages exchanged between Peter Strzok and Lisa
Page, the two FBI employees who made pro-Clinton and anti-Trump comments
while working on the Clinton email and the Russia collusion investigations.
The disclosure was made Friday in a letter sent by the
Justice Department to the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental
Affairs Committee (HSGAC).
“The Department wants to bring to your attention that 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,” Stephen Boyd, the assistant attorney general for legislative
affairs at the Justice Department, wrote to Wisconsin Sen. Ron Johnson, the
chairman of HSGAC.
He said that texts are missing for the period
between Dec. 14, 2016 and May 17, 2017.
Boyd attributed the failure to “misconfiguration issues
related to rollouts, provisioning, and software upgrades that conflicted with
the FBI’s collection capabilities.”
“The result was that data that should have been
automatically collected and retained for long-term storage and retrieval was
not collected,” Boyd wrote.
Strzok and Page were significant players in the Clinton
and Trump investigations. As deputy chief of counterintelligence, Strzok
oversaw the Trump investigation when it was opened in July 2016. Weeks earlier,
he had wrapped up his work as one of the top investigators on the Clinton email
probe.
Both worked on Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s Russia
investigation until July 2017.
But Strzok was removed after the Justice Department’s
inspector general discovered text messages he exchanged with Page, with whom he
was having an affair, in which both expressed strong criticism of Trump.
In one text, Strzok called Trump and “idiot.” In another,
he said “F Trump.”
In another more cryptic exchange, Strzok spoke of an
“insurance policy” that the FBI sought to take out in case Trump defeated
Clinton in the election.
“I want to believe the path you threw out for
consideration in Andy’s office — that there’s no way [Trump] gets elected — but
I’m afraid we can’t take that risk,” Strzok wrote to Page on Aug. 15, 2016.
“Andy” was a reference to FBI Deputy Director Andrew
McCabe.
“It’s like an insurance policy in the unlikely event you
die before you’re 40,” Strzok added. Republicans have questioned what Strzok meant
by “insurance policy.”
Page left the Mueller team prior to the discovery of the
texts.
Johnson expressed concern over the missing text messages,
which were sent during a key period of the Russia investigation. During that
time frame is when the Steele dossier was published by BuzzFeed News, when
Strzok participated in a Jan. 24 interview with then-national security adviser
Michael Flynn, and when James Comey was fired as FBI director.
The end date of the missing Strzok-Page texts is also
significant. That’s because May 17 is the day when Mueller was appointed to
take over the FBI’s probe of possible collusion between the Trump campaign and
Russian government.
“The loss of records from this period is concerning,”
Johnson wrote in a letter sent Saturday to FBI Director Christopher Wray.
Along with its disclosure of the missing text messages,
DOJ’s Boyd handed over 384 pages of additional text messages exchanged between
Strzok and Page.
______________
Was Lynch coordinating with Comey in the Clinton
investigation?
BY SHARYL ATTKISSON
Former Attorney General Loretta Lynch knew well in
advance of FBI Director James Comey's 2016 press conference that he would
recommend against charging Hillary Clinton, according to information turned
over to the Senate Homeland Security Committee on Friday.
The revelation was
included in 384 pages of text messages exchanged between FBI officials Peter
Strzok and Lisa Page, and it significantly diminishes the credibility of
Lynch's earlier commitment to accept Comey's recommendation — a commitment she
made under the pretense that the two were not coordinating with each other.
And it gets worse.
Comey and Lynch reportedly knew that Clinton would never face charges even
before the FBI conducted its three-hour interview with Clinton, which was
supposedly meant to gather more information into her mishandling of classified
information.
On July 1, 2016,
as the Lynch announcement became public, Page texted Strzok:
Page: And yeah, it’s a real profile in couragw [sic],
since she knows no charges will be brought.
There are other revelations within the text messages.
But
in the cover letter accompanying them, the FBI notified Congress that many
additional text messages are missing.
Photo: Peter Strzok (Left) and Lisa Page (Right)
According to the FBI, its “technical
system for retaining text messages sent and received on FBI mobile devices
failed to preserve text messages for Mr. Strzok and Ms. Page from December 14,
2016 to approximately to [sic] May 17, 2017.”
The reason?
(M)any FBI-provided Samsung 5 mobile devices did not
capture or store text messages due to misconfiguration issues related to
rollouts, provisioning, and software upgrades that conflicted with the FBI’s
collection capabilities. The result was that data that should have been
automatically collected and retained for long-term storage and retrieval was
not collected.
In a letter to FBI Director Christopher Wray sent
yesterday, the head of the Senate Homeland Security Committee Ron Johnson, a
Republican from Wisconsin, called the loss of records “concerning.”
Strzok and Page
communicated in a voluminous fashion via text message while allegedly having an
illicit affair.
Strzok was a key figure in the Hillary Clinton exoneration and
reportedly interviewed President Trump's former national security adviser Lt.
Gen. Michael Flynn (which resulted in Flynn pleading guilty to lying to the
FBI).
Until last summer, Strzok and Page were both members of Special Counsel
Robert Mueller’s team investigating the allegations of collusion between Russia
and Trump's campaign.
Neither has been accused of wrongdoing.
The text messages
seem to indicate that some within the FBI were making investigatory decisions
based on Trump’s ascendancy among the Republican field of presidential
candidates.
On May 4, 2016 Strzok and Page had the following text message
exchange:
Page: And holy shit Cruz just dropped out of the race.
It’s going to be a Clinton Trump race. Unbelievable.
Strzok:
What?!?!??
Page: You
heard it right my friend.
Strzok: I saw trump won, figured it
would be a bit…Now the pressure really starts to finish MYE…
Page: It
sure does. We need to talk about follow up call tomorrow.
“MYE” stands for “midyear exam” and was the FBI case name
for the Clinton email investigation.
The text exchanges
also indicate the FBI substituted, and then omitted, damaging language in FBI
Director Comey’s July 5, 2016 statement that recommended Clinton not be
charged.
The original draft noted that Clinton had improperly used personal
email to contact President Obama while abroad in the territory of sophisticated
adversaries.
According to the text exchange, an FBI official then removed
President Obama’s name and stated that Clinton had simply emailed “another
senior government official.” In the final statement as delivered by Comey on
July 5, both references were omitted entirely.
Other texts
suggest Strzok and Page intended to subvert rules governing preservation of
their discussions about FBI matters.
In April of 2016, Page texted:
Page: so look, you say we text on that phone when we talk
about Hillary because it can’t be traced…
In previous text messages produced to the House of
Representatives, Strzok and Page discussed needing an “insurance policy” in the
event Trump were to become president.
The newest batch of text messages turned
over on Friday show that in February of 2016, Page texted Strzok that
then-candidate Trump “simply can not [sic] be president.”
Any neutral observer would have to be concerned about
supposed missing evidence from a premier law enforcement and intel collection
agency as well as the types of discussions and conflicts of interest apparently
at issue with key officials within the FBI.
It’s one more piece of a developing
story that unfortunately points to alleged misconduct by some at top levels in
our intelligence community.
If the allegations bear out, it could have huge
implications for a number of investigations handled by the officials in
question over the past decade — not just cases related to the 2016 campaign.
The FBI did not immediately respond to a request for
comment.
Sharyl
Attkisson (@SharylAttkisson) is an Emmy-award winning investigative journalist,
author of The New York Times bestsellers “The Smear” and “Stonewalled,” and
host of Sinclair’s Sunday TV program “Full Measure.”
