Posted on 01/21/2018 11:49:50 AM PST by billorites
The FBI “failed to preserve” five months worth of text messages exchanged between Peter Strzok and Lisa Page, the two FBI employees who made pro-Clinton and anti-Trump comments while working on the Clinton email and the Russia collusion investigations.
The disclosure was made Friday in a letter sent by the Justice Department to the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee (HSGAC).
“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,” Stephen Boyd, the assistant attorney general for legislative affairs at the Justice Department, wrote to Wisconsin Sen. Ron Johnson, the chairman of HSGAC. (RELATED: FBI Agents Discussed ‘Insurance Policy’ Against Trump Win)
He said that texts are missing for the period between Dec. 14, 2016 and May 17, 2017.
Boyd attributed the failure 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,” Boyd wrote.
Strzok and Page were significant players in the Clinton and Trump investigations. As deputy chief of counterintelligence, Strzok oversaw the Trump investigation when it was opened in July 2016. Weeks earlier, he had wrapped up his work as one of the top investigators on the Clinton email probe.
Both worked on Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s Russia investigation until July 2017.
But Strzok was removed after the Justice Department’s inspector general discovered text messages he exchanged with Page, with whom he was having an affair, in which both expressed strong criticism of Trump.
In one text, Strzok called Trump and “idiot.” In another, he said “F Trump.”
In another more cryptic exchange, Strzok spoke of an “insurance policy” that the FBI sought to take out in case Trump defeated Clinton in the election.
“I want to believe the path you threw out for consideration in Andy’s office — that there’s no way [Trump] gets elected — but I’m afraid we can’t take that risk,” Strzok wrote to Page on Aug. 15, 2016.
“Andy” was a reference to FBI Deputy Director Andrew McCabe.
“It’s like an insurance policy in the unlikely event you die before you’re 40,” Strzok added. Republicans have questioned what Strzok meant by “insurance policy.”
Page left the Mueller team prior to the discovery of the texts.
Johnson expressed concern over the missing text messages, which were sent during a key period of the Russia investigation. During that time frame is when the Steele dossier was published by BuzzFeed News, when Strzok participated in a Jan. 24 interview with then-national security adviser Michael Flynn, and when James Comey was fired as FBI director.
The end date of the missing Strzok-Page texts is also significant. That’s because May 17 is the day when Mueller was appointed to take over the FBI’s probe of possible collusion between the Trump campaign and Russian government.
“The loss of records from this period is concerning,” Johnson wrote in a letter sent Saturday to FBI Director Christopher Wray.
Along with its disclosure of the missing text messages, DOJ’s Boyd handed over 384 additional text messages exchanged between Strzok and Page.
And they say such things with a straight face.
The old-guard KGB must be sooooooo jealous.
I did not know this..... This is absolutely amazing... It would seem that All of the Washington political insiders are criminals....
It is just an educated guess on my part but I am absolutely confident that one of the highest priority targets, if not the primary target, of NSA communications capture and retention is other US government employees.
The texts still exist because pimps gotta pimp and spies gotta spy.
So who elses’ texts disappeared during this time frame? Or were Strzok and Page unique? No way this is an accident.
Wray needs to bring in outsiders with no connection to the Obama/Clinton/DNC corruption machine to recover the texts and figure out who deleted them and when. This disappearance indicates more layers of corruption within the DoJ/FBI that need to be eradicated.
“Replace the AG with an actual living person who will prosecute these traitors and see that they are convicted.”
Sessions is real; he is just tired, conflicted, and compromised.
“In this context, Nixon should have ‘accidentally’ erased all of the tapes.”
I well remember the Democrat and media outrage at the 18 minute gap in the Nixon tapes.
Weekend at Sessions.
CONCERNING????? No..buddy....CRIMINAL!! PLAY HARDBALL with these CORRUPT CREEPS!
It’s not that they failed to preserve them. They intentionally erased them!
Isn’t that funny...My emails don’t self destruct...I have to delete them manually...
If serious jail time doesn't exist for its violation?
NO STATUTE OF LIMITATION!!!
NO "DEALS!!
Is any leadership at home in DC?
The chart I included in post 63 was the phone company holding periods as of 2010 FOR LAW ENFORCEMENT.
So typical of BHO ADM. operators...
PUT BOTH AGENTS UNDER OATH AND QUESTION THEM UNTIL THEY BREAK...
JUST WONDERING....
Is the affair between FBI Agents, ‘Peter and Lisa’ still an on going affair? or did their mates forgive and every thing is now ‘hunky dory’?
“Page and Strozk are still still still not in jail.”
Why can’t the DOJ get a FISA warrant to obtain the text messages?
Snort...I could care less.
Spoliation of Evidence is the intentional, reckless, or negligent withholding, hiding, altering, fabricating, or destroying of evidence relevant to a legal proceeding.
Spoliation has three possible consequences: in jurisdictions where the (intentional) act is criminal by statute, it may result in fines and incarceration (if convicted in a separate criminal proceeding) for the parties who engaged in the spoliation; in jurisdictions where relevant case law precedent has been established, proceedings possibly altered by spoliation may be interpreted under a spoliation inference, or by other corrective measures, depending on the jurisdiction; in some jurisdictions the act of spoliation can itself be an actionable tort.
The spoliation inference is a negative evidentiary inference that a finder of fact can draw from a party's destruction of a document or thing that is relevant to an ongoing or reasonably foreseeable civil or criminal proceeding: the finder of fact can review all evidence uncovered in as strong a light as possible against the spoliator and in favor of the opposing party.
This is why we let opposing parties know immediately of an intent to file litigation and advise them against destruction of any electronic or document evidence relating to the matter.
While a case might be civil, the spoliation of evidence is usually criminal.
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