Newly Released Text Messages Reveal Hidden FBI Information Into Clinton Probe
Peter Strzok and Lisa Page are in the spotlight for their text messages. Again.
This time, a newly released trove of messages revealed that the agent who led the FBI probe into Hillary Clinton’s emails and the bureau lawyer (who was also the agent’s mistress) both felt they knew the outcome of the email investigation before Clinton had even been interviewed.
According to Fox News, an exchange from July 1, 2016 revealed that days after it was discovered that then-Attorney General Loretta Lynch had a meeting with Bill Clinton on a Phoenix airport tarmac, Lynch knew there would be no charges filed in the investigation.
The exchange came after Lynch said she would accept the findings of the FBI in the matter.
“Timing looks like hell,” Strzok said in a text to Page.
“Yeah, that is awful timing,” Page said. “It’s a real profile in couragw (sic), since she knows no charges will be brought.”
The texts were among 384 pages of messages from Strzrok and Page that were turned over to the Senate Homeland Security Committee.
However, FBI officials notified committee chairman Sen. Rob Johnson of Wisconsin that texts between Dec. 14, 2016 and May 17, 2017, were lost by the bureau.
“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, assistant attorney general for legislative affairs at the Justice Department, said in a letter to Johnson.
Boyd blamed “misconfiguration issues related to rollouts, provisioning, and software upgrades that conflicted with the FBI’s collection capabilities,” according to The Daily Caller.
“The result was that data that should have been automatically collected and retained for long-term storage and retrieval was not collected.”
However, the dates are significant, in that May 17, 2017, was the day that Robert Mueller was appointed as special counsel and the period also covers the Trump transition, including when the president-elect was informed of the existence of the controversial “Trump dossier.”
“The loss of records from this period is concerning,” Johnson, a Republican, said in a letter sent Saturday to FBI Director Christopher Wray.
Strzok’s text messages with Page have come under increasing scrutiny ever since it became clear they contained more than just epithets directed toward the man who would become president. In one somewhat cryptic message, Strzok said the FBI should have an “insurance policy” against a Trump win.
“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 texted on Aug. 15, 2016, referring to FBI Deputy Director Andrew McCabe.
“It’s like an insurance policy in the unlikely event you die before you’re 40.”
That “insurance policy” has become one of the focuses of the Republican investigation into whether or not there was any untoward behavior on Strzok’s part. Now, however, it could take a backseat to the alleged fact the top investigator on the Hillary case knew the outcome before she was interviewed.
H/T TheBlaze
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