The Justice Department said it has found thousands of text messages between FBI officials that mysteriously went missing.
There were five months’ worth of messages, from December 2016 to May 2017, between FBI officials Peter Strzok and Lisa Page that were reported missing over the weekend. Strzok and Page reportedly exchanged 50,000 text messages.
“The [Office of the Inspector General] has been investigating this matter, and, this week, succeeded in using forensic tools to recover text messages from FBI devices,” Justice Department Inspector General Michael Horowitz wrote in a letter to senators Chuck Grassley and Ron Johnson, both Republicans, The Hill exclusively reported.
The texts were initially thought “missing” due to a technical glitch.
“Where are the 50,000 important text messages between FBI lovers Lisa Page and Peter Strzok,” President Donald Trump tweeted on Wednesday. “Blaming Samsung!”
Where are the 50,000 important text messages between FBI lovers Lisa Page and Peter Strzok? Blaming Samsung!
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) January 24, 2018
The messages span what has been described as a crucial time for the agency – the transition from a government run by then-President Barack Obama, a Democrat, and now-President Trump, a Republican. The texts reportedly provide proof that the FBI had a bias against President Trump, and that the Russia investigation is also biased against the President.
The texts – and the FBI itself – have come under intense scrutiny, as Republican lawmakers continue to call for the release of a scandalous memo that is said to reveal an extreme bias against the Trump Administration.
There is no ignoring the now-infamous memo written by House Intelligence Committee Republicans that purportedly reveals a shocking high-level conspiracy. Politicians are demanding it be released, but the FBI and the Justice Department are much more hesitant, especially in light of the recent text message fiasco, where thousands of messages between FBI officials apparently went missing.
The memo and text messages are said to reveal conspiracy among some of the highest echelons of government, involving the FBI plotting to spy on and upend President Donald Trump and his administration.
While Democrats are now saying the “#ReleaseTheMemo” movement is merely a distraction from the current federal investigation into Russian interference in the Presidential election, Republican politicians have been front and center pushing for the memo to be published.
Republicans are also calling out the FBI, including former Speaker of the House and 2012 Republican Presidential candidate nominee Newt Gingrich.
Gingrich was featured on Fox and Friends Thursday morning, and he made mention of the “corrupt” FBI, as well as the “secret group to undermine Trump.”
“I think 98 percent of the FBI agents are hard-working, very serious about enforcing the law, and are the people that we’ve always respected,” Gingrich said. “But for some reason, at the very top in the last few years, you’ve had a bunch of people who frankly, have been running a corrupt operation.
“They’re not obeying the law. Their primary interest is not the law,” he explained. “When you’ve got a secret group to undermine Trump… That’s a pretty huge break in the American system.”
“When you discover … they [top officials] believed that the fix was in all along, that Hillary [Clinton] was never going to be charged … That’s pretty wild,” Gingrich continued.
“At some point you have to say, what’s the deal here,” Gingrich said. “It looks amazingly fishy.”
Republican Sen. Ron Johnson had told Fox Tuesday that there is a “secret society” of the FBI that’s trying to undermine the Trump Administration, and there’s proof that the society was holding off-site meetings outside the Justice Department.
“What this is all about is further evidence of corruption … at the highest levels of the FBI. And that secret society? We have an informant who’s talking about a group that was holding secret meetings off-site,” he told host Bret Baier. “There is so much smoke here, so much suspicion.”
The FBI is currently under great scrutiny and suspicion where it concerns its motives and actions – especially since the text messages between top FBI officials went missing. Those text messages also make mention of the “secret society,” according to those who have knowledge of their content.
The messages are also said to reveal that there is no “‘there’ there” for special counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation into the alleged Russian hacking of the 2016 Presidential election, Johnson has said, and that the FBI’s goals are only to frame the President.
Gingrich on Thursday morning made mention of the texts, pointing out that there was even a text from one top FBI official saying “he wasn’t sure he wanted to work for Mueller because there was nothing there,” meaning no merit to the Russia investigation.
He also predicted that Mueller “will not go away quietly,” especially now given the magnitude and publicity of the Russia investigation.
“He’ll find someone to charge with something,” Gingrich said.
“We have a bias, potentially corruption at the highest levels of the FBI that is now investigating… And by the way, Robert Mueller used to run the FBI,” Johnson had pointed out Tuesday. “He’s in no position to do an investigation over this type of misconduct.”
Johnson said that Congress needs to look into a special counsel to undertake the Russia investigation.
