• • DOJ recovers missing text messages between anti-Trump FBI agents Strzok and Page
• • Whoops! FBI 'Loses' Five Months of Texts Between FBI Agents Peter Strzok and Lisa Page

The Department of Justice has recovered missing text messages between anti-Trump FBI officials Peter Strzok and Lisa Page, the DOJ's inspector general said Thursday.

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."

"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."

Fox News has learned from U.S. government officials that the inspector general recovered the texts by taking possession of "at least four" phones belonging to Strzok and Page. 

Fox News' Sean Hannity had reported Wednesday that the Department of Justice had started to recover some of the texts.

The missing messages have been at the center of a storm of controversy on Capitol Hill, after the DOJ notified congressional committees that there is a gap in records between Dec. 14, 2016, and May 17, 2017. Strzok and Page are under scrutiny after it was revealed that the former members of Robert Mueller's team exchanged a series of anti-Trump texts during the presidential campaign

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The Federal Bureau of Investigation has lost about five months of text messages between two top officials, Peter Strzok and Lisa Page, who openly disparaged then-candidate Donald Trump while working on the Clinton email investigation and the Russia probe investigation, according to a top Republican senator.

The officials in question are Peter Strzok and Lisa Page - the two senior FBI officials who had texted each other hundreds of text messages in which they shared how much they loathed Trump and spoke of an "insurance policy" in the case of Trump's election.

Senate Homeland Security Committee Chairman Ron Johnson (R-WI) revealed in a January 20, 2018, letter to FBI Director Christopher Wray that the FBI said their technical system failed to preserve texts exchanged between Strzok and Page between December 14, 2016, though May 17, 2017.

"The loss of records from this period is concerning because it is apparent from other records that Mr. Strzok and Ms. Page communicated frequently about the investigation," Johnson said in his letter.

Michael Doran, senior fellow at the Hudson Institute, astutely noted that May 17, 2017, was the date that the Special Counsel was convened.

 

Mike@Doranimated

What a weird coincidence! "Misconfiguration issues related to rollouts, provisioning, and software upgrades" destroyed the Strzok-Page text messages during a period that ended on May 17, the very day Mueller started. How bizarre is that? It's almost as if it was planned that way.

The inspector general first found the texts between Strzok and Page while investigating whether political bias played a role either in the Clinton email investigation or the investigation into the Trump campaign.

Strzok was deputy chief of counterintelligence, played a leading role on the Clinton investigation, and reportedly is the one who watered down language that could have held criminal implications for Clinton. He oversaw the Trump investigation when it was opened in July 2016.

Strzok and Page were assigned to the special counsel investigation, but after the Justice Department inspector general found the texts, Strzok was promptly removed. Page had left weeks earlier, reportedly because her assignment to the special counsel had ended. Strzok was engaged in an extramarital affair with Page.

Johnson said in the letter that he learned of the missing texts on January 19 after the FBI handed over an additional 384 texts to the committee.

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(CNSNews.com) -- House Representative Matt Gaetz (R-Fla.), along with eight other members of Congress, sent a letter to FBI Director Christopher Wray on Wednesday demanding answers to numerous questions about the alleged loss of five months of phone-text messages bewteen anti-Trump FBI agents Peter Strzok and his mistress, Lisa Page. In particular, the congressmen want to know where are the phones used by Strzok and Page and did the alleged loss occur because of the phones or the FBI's retrieval procedures.

In a Jan. 25 press release about the letter, Rep. Gaetz's said, "This letter follows the FBI's announcement [on Jan. 19], in a letter sent by the Justice Department to the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee, which stated that 'FBI mobile devices failed to preserve text messages for Mr. Strzok and Ms. Page' for a period of five months.

"Stephen Boyd, the Assistant Attorney General for Legislative Affairs at the Justice Department attributed the failure to 'misconfiguration issues' related to rollouts, provisioning, and software upgrades that conflicted with the FBI's collection capabilities.'"

"The FBI agents whose text messages were lost were Peter Strzok and Lisa Page, who have recently come under scrutiny for their vehemently anti-Trump correspondence, and discussing a cryptic 'insurance policy' were Trump to be elected," said Gaetz

"During the five months of missing messages, President Trump formally took office, Michael Flynn was hired, fired, and interviewed (by Peter Strzok), Buzzfeed published the 'salacious and unverified' dossier, and Robert Mueller was appointed to serve as Special Counsel. The FBI's message-retention capabilities were suddenly restored on May 17^th, the same day Mueller was appointed."

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More than 50,000 texts were exchanged between two FBI officials who have come under fire for exchanging anti-Trump messages during the 2016 election, Attorney General Jeff Sessions revealed Monday. 

The figure surfaced as lawmakers have been pressing for answers after revelations that the FBI "failed to preserve" five months of texts between Peter Strzok and Lisa Page.

"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," Sessions said in a statement provided to Fox News. "If we are successful, we will update the congressional committees immediately."

The missing messages from Strzok and Page span a crucial window, between the presidential transition and the launch of Robert Mueller's Russia probe -- where both officials previously were assigned.

"After reviewing the voluminous records on the FBI's servers, which included over 50,000 texts, the Inspector General discovered the FBI's system failed to retain text messages for approximately 5 months between December 14, 2016 to May 17, 2017," Sessions said.