Posted on 01/23/2018 9:11:11 PM PST by mojito
WASHINGTON – U.S. Sen. Ron Johnson, chairman of the Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee, and Sen. Chuck Grassley, chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, wrote a letter to the Justice Department Office of Inspector General Tuesday regarding the revelation that the FBI did not preserve text messages between Peter Strzok and Lisa Page for the time period between Dec. 14, 2016, and May 17, 2017.
In a previous letter to Sens Johnson and Grassley, IG Michael Horowitz stated his office obtained text messages from Nov. 30, 2016, through July 28, 2017 without disclosing the missing texts. The Senators’ letter is asking the DOJ Inspector General (1) to explain why he did not previously disclose FBI’s failure to provide the missing texts, and (2) to inform the committees about the steps the IG is taking to investigate the circumstances surrounding the missing texts.
The letter can be found here and below:
January 23, 2018
The Honorable Michael E. Horowitz
Inspector General
U.S. Department of Justice
950 Pennsylvania Avenue, N.W. Washington, D.C. 20530-0001
Dear Inspector General Horowitz:
The Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs and the Committee on the Judiciary are conducting oversight of the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) and the FBI’s investigation of classified information on former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s private email server. We write to request information about the loss of FBI records connected to this investigation.
On January 12, 2017, the Department of Justice Office of Inspector General (DOJ OIG) announced an investigation of “allegations that Department or FBI policies or procedures were not followed in connection with, or in actions leading up to or related to, the FBI Director’s public announcement on July 5, 2016, and the Director’s letters to Congress on October 28 and November 6, 2016 and that certain underlying investigative decisions were based on improper considerations.”
On December 6, 2017, we wrote to you concerning the DOJ OIG discovery of text messages between FBI employees Lisa Page and Peter Strzok. Your response, dated December 13, 2017, suggested that DOJ OIG received all text messages between Ms. Page and Mr. Strzok from November 30, 2016 to July 28, 2017. You wrote:
In gathering evidence for the OIG’s ongoing 2016 election review, we requested, consistent with standard practice, that the FBI produce text messages from the FBI-issued phones of certain FBI employees involved in the Clinton email investigation based on search terms we provided. After finding a number of politically-oriented text messages between Page and Strzok, the OIG sought from the FBI all text messages between Strzok and Page from their FBI-issued phones through November 30, 2016, which covered the entire period of the Clinton e-mail server investigation. The FBI produced these text messages on July 20, 2017. Following our review of those text messages, the OIG expanded our request to the FBI to include all text messages between Strzok and Page from November 30, 2016, through the date of the document request, which was July 28, 2017. The OIG received these additional messages on August 10, 2017.
On January 19, 2018, the Department of Justice produced to Congress 384 pages of text messages exchanged between Ms. Page and Mr. Strzok. According to a cover letter accompanying the documents, the FBI did not preserve text messages between Ms. Page and Mr. Strzok between approximately December 14, 2016 and May 17, 2017. The cover letter explained:
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 from December 14, 2016 to approximately to May 17, 2017. The FBI has informed [the Department of Justice] that many 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.
These statements—that DOJ OIG requested “all text messages between Strzok and Page from November 30, 2016, [to] July 28, 2017,” received them on August 10, 2017, and that the FBI “failed to preserve text messages from Mr. Strzok and Ms. Page from December 14, 2016, to approximately May 17, 2017”—need to be reconciled. During a phone call on January 22, 2018, DOJ OIG staff indicated that the FBI did not produce text messages between Mr. Strzok and Ms. Page from December 14, 2016, to May 17, 2017.
Accordingly, to understand fully the scope of text messages in the possession of the DOJ OIG, we respectfully request that you please provide the following information and material:
1. Is it accurate that the FBI failed to provide to DOJ OIG text messages between Mr. Strzok and Ms. Page from December 14, 2016, to May 17, 2017 due to technical errors that prevented the texts from being archived in the FBI’s records preservation system?
a. Has the FBI also been unable to provide the texts from any other source, such as the physical phones, carrier records, or any other source?
b. Has the OIG requested texts of other FBI personnel during the same time period? If so, has the FBI also been unable to produce texts of others as well or is the missing text problem limited to these two employees?
c. On what date did the OIG request access to messages for that time period from the FBI?
d. Did the FBI notify the OIG of the missing text messages between Mr. Strzok and Ms. Page? If so, on what date? If not, how and on what date did the OIG discover that messages were missing?
e. Did the DOJ OIG notify the office of the Deputy Attorney General of the missing text messages between Mr. Strzok and Ms. Page? If so, on what date?
f. Please explain why the DOJ OIG did not notify Congress of the missing text messages.
2. Please produce all communications between DOJ OIG, DOJ, and the FBI referring or relating to the missing text messages.
3. The Attorney General said in a statement yesterday that your office was already undertaking a review of the circumstances that led to the FBI’s failure to preserve and provide texts to the OIG. On what date did that review begin, and what is the scope and methodology of that OIG review?
4. Has the DOJ OIG been successful in retrieving any of the missing text messages from any other source?
5. Does the OIG have the necessary authorities, resources, and capabilities to obtain the missing texts from another source? If not, please identify any gaps in your office’s ability to do so.
6. In the most recent batch of texts, Mr. Strzok and Ms. Page frequently indicate that they are also communicating about work-related matters via apparently personal accounts on Apple’s encrypted iMessage texting system, as well as through Gmail. Does the OIG have the necessary authorities, resources, and capabilities to obtain any federal records that may reside in those personal accounts? If not, please explain any gaps in your ability to do so.
7. Has the OIG asked Mr. Strzok or Ms. Page to voluntarily provide any information from their personal accounts? If so, have they been cooperative? If the OIG has not asked, please explain why not.
8. Has the DOJ OIG interviewed Mr. Strzok or Ms. Page?
9. Has the DOJ OIG interviewed employees of the FBI’s Information Technology office regarding the loss of text messages?
Please respond to this letter as soon as possible but no later than January 29, 2018.
Thank you for your attention to this matter. If you have any questions about this request, please contact Kyle Brosnan or Brian Downey of the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee staff at (202) 224-4751 or Josh Flynn-Brown of the Senate Judiciary Committee staff at (202) 224-5225.
Sincerely,
Ron Johnson Charles E. Grassley
Chairman Chairman
Committee on Homeland Security Committee on the Judiciary and Governmental Affairs
Whoreowitz is deep state.
Don’t beclown yourself. You obviously know nothing about the man and how hard he fought Obama and Holder.
I have seen no reason to automatically trust Horowitz. My fear has been that like every other appointee during Obama’s tenure he is dirty. If the OIG did accept this BS reason for not producing the 5 months of texts he is dirty. Johnson and Grassley are about to find out what this guy really is.
Or, Horowitz did find out about the missing text messages but he never told Congress?
Neither scenario looks good.
Don’t beclown yourself. You obviously know nothing about the man and how hard he fought Obama and Holder.
Speaking of not knowing anything: what happened to “wait until January 15th and the IG report will be released”?
I realize you’re trying to keep morale up here in a big psywar but you spin harder than a Democrat defending Sleepy Sessions and the rest of the swamp.
I have seen no reason to automatically trust Horowitz. My fear has been that like every other appointee during Obama’s tenure he is dirty.
I don’t know if he is dirty but I do know that he is a beltway careerist. That makes it extremely unlikely he will want to fight a political nuclear war with the kenyan and his media allies. So far POTUS is literally the only person willing to risk everything. Everyone else save maybe Nunes have gone AWOL when the bullets fly for real.
If Horowitz had the “missing “ texts surely the FBI would not have have concocted the story they did. I agree, this does not look good for Horowitz. Fortunately I think enough leads are there that even a possible OIG whitewash won’t stop the congressional momentum.
Horowitz year and half long “investigation” is allowing the Democrats to play their typical beltway theater delay tactics. He will release his report right before Congress goes on summer vacation and nothing will happen because the midterms will be in the fall. Anything the GOP does in the fall will be painted as partisan by the Dems (they’ve already started that spin) and Ryan/McConnell will fold like cheap suits.
“How hard he fought Holder and Obama”
He really put the fear of the law and constitution into Holder and Obama.
What criminal enterprise did he ever deter Obama from?
Fortunately I think enough leads are there that even a possible OIG whitewash won’t stop the congressional momentum.
What will stop congressional momentum is the mid terms. Ryan and McConnell will get cold feet after being accused of partisanship and nothing will happen. We’ve seen this movie before. It has a bad ending.
Sounds like the Horowitz Fast & Furious IG whitewash.
Yes, important questions - more importantly, when and how thoroughly will they be answered.
I love how this is all playing out. The good guys know the facts and ain’t gonna let this go. I hope a movie is made of this one day. Historic.
This is what Mueller has been up to. Hiding evidence of deep state and FBI collusion to bring down Trump.
And of course the IG report is just an administrative matter. Not a criminal proceeding.
We need a Special Prosecutor now setting perjury traps for the FBI scum. Put them under oath, ruin their lives and perp walk them. What’s good for the goose...
Anyone see this. I don’t know much about the source.
BREAKING: Robert Mueller himself ordered the deletion of Peter Strzok’s text messages after Strzok admitted they would expose and detail the @FBI’s entire plan to frame President Trump......developing
https://mobile.twitter.com/therealcornett
Perhaps the sock elves too 'em
¯\_(ツ)_/¯
I think we are going to know a lot more when it is revealed which other senior FBI employees had "problems" with text preservation, and what the dates are.
All the texts we have are from Page's phone. Strzok's Galaxy5 phone text preservation was turned off as of June 2016. And if you read carefully, no date was disclosed for text reconnect when he got his Galaxy7 ie. it never happened...
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