Wisconsin Senator Ron Johnson, who chairs the Senate Homeland Security Committee, claims that the Federal Bureau of Investigation lost five months worth of text messages between two staffers that were part of the probes into the former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s emails.
Johnson revealed on Saturday that the FBI technical system did not manage to preserve the texts between FBI agent Peter Strzok and Lisa Page, a lawyer that was assigned to work on the investigation.
According to Reuters, Congressional Republicans have been focusing on Strzok and Page in recent weeks after learning the two had exchanged anti-Trump text messages on their work-issued cell phones. Republicans have said the texts, which referred to Trump as an “idiot” and a “loathsome human,” raised concerns the FBI is biased against Trump and may have given Clinton favorable treatment by deciding not to recommend criminal charges regarding the investigation into her use of a private email system while she was secretary of state.
Both the agent and the lawyer were also assigned to work with special counsel Robert Mueller on the Russia investigation which ended quickly after Mueller learned about the texts. Strzok was re-assigned to a different post while Page’s 45-day detail on Mueller’s team ended in July.
Senator Johnson said he learned of the software problem from the FBI just after 384 texts were given to the committee that probes how the FBI handled the Clinton investigation.
“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.
Johnson required from the FBI to conduct a more thorough investigation about how the records were lost and also to report to the committee whether their non-government issued devices have been checked.
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