Good news for the American people who want the truth and bad news for constitutional obstructionists. The Department of Justice announced that they have recovered all of the “missing” text messages between anti-Trump FBI officials Peter Strzok and Lisa Page.
This will not bode well for a couple of certain higher-ups in the FBI and elsewhere. In a letter sent to congressional committees, Justice Department Inspector General Michael Horowitz said his office “succeeded in using forensic tools to recover text messages from FBI devices, including text messages between Mr. Strzok and Ms. Page that were sent or received between December 14, 2016 and May 17, 2017.”
That was the critical six-month period that was initially said to have been “lost” on the Samsung phones. “Our effort to recover any additional text messages is ongoing,” Horowitz said. “We will provide copies of the text messages that we recover from these devices to the Department so that the Department’s leadership can take any management action it deems appropriate.”
The missing messages are reminiscent of the Watergate era and the infamous 18-minute gap in President Nixon’s White House tape recordings. The DOJ had notified congressional committees there was indeed a gap in records between Dec. 14, 2016, and May 17, 2017.
Strzok and Page are under intense scrutiny since it was discovered the former members of Robert Mueller’s team exchanged a series of anti-Trump texts during the presidential campaign. Although it is not against the law for FBI personnel to have personal political beliefs, that raises eyebrows when those people are part of an investigative team.
In this case, more than 50,000 texts were exchanged between Strzok and Page. Attorney General Jeff Sessions personally revealed the information on Monday and had pledged to get to the truth.
In a statement to Fox News, Sessions wrote, “We will leave no stone unturned to confirm with certainty why these text messages are not now available to be produced and will use every technology available to determine whether the missing messages are recoverable from another source. If we are successful, we will update the congressional committees immediately.”
Within two days. federal law enforcement officials told Fox News on Wednesday that thousands of FBI cellphones had been affected during the period of time in question apparently by technical glitch. That prevented the Strzok and Page messages from being stored or uploaded into the bureau’s archive system.
That was the story. However, Horowitz sent his letter on Wednesday confirming the discovery of texts to Senate Homeland Security Committee Chairman Ron Johnson, R-Wis., and Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Chuck Grassley, R-Iowa, who had inquired about the messages.
The five-month gap is the period of time between President Donald Trump’s inauguration, the firings of National Security Adviser Michael Flynn and FBI Director James Comey and the standing-up of former FBI Director Mueller as special counsel to investigate alleged Trump campaign collusion with Russian officials during the 2016 election. Obviously this is possible key evidence in any sort of mass conspiracy against Trump and his administration.
