There was supposedly a "technical glitch" that made months of text messages disappear from anti-Trump FBI employees Peter Strzok and Lisa Page. Now it allegedly affected thousands of FBI cellphones.
This information surfaced after officials recently learned that there were five months of texts between Strzok and Page that ran from December 14, 2016 to May 17, 2017 missing. These missing texts were lost right when investigators were in the process of discovering texts that showed a very strong anti-Trump bias.
The Department of Justice told Fox News officials that “the glitch affected the phones of 'nearly' 10 percent of the FBI’s 35,000 employees.”
The same officials are attempting to recover the physical cellphones that were impacted by the "glitch." Additionally they are "taking steps" to gain access to the missing text messages from the cell phone companies.
Per Fox News:
Senate Homeland Security Committee Chairman Ron Johnson, R-Wis., and Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Chuck Grassley, R-Iowa, have sent a letter to Inspector General Michael Horowitz noting that the IG's office said on Dec. 13 that it had all the messages between Strzok and Page between Nov. 30, 2016 and July 28, 2017.
Lawmakers later learned of the five-month gap.
The lawmakers want the IG's office to "reconcile" those two points.
A report from The Washington Examiner revealed an important detail in the case of the missing text messages. There were conflicting accounts on what happened from the Justice Department's Inspector General Office:
“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,” [Michael E. Horowitz, Justice inspector general] wrote to [Sen. Ron Johnson (R-WI)].
But last week, the IG’s office changed its story. “The department wants to bring to your attention that the FBI’s technical system for retaining text messages sent and received on FBI motile devices failed to preserve text messages for Mr. Strzok and Ms. Page from December 14, 2016 to approximately to May 17, 2017,” the office wrote.
Paula Reid, a CBS News Justice Department reporter, added that she received confirmation on the time period when the phones were affected.
NEW: DOJ confirms "thousands" of FBI-issued phones failed to store text message data over *at least* a one year period (June 2016-May 2017).
— Paula Reid (@PaulaReidCNN) January 24, 2018
Per Daily Wire:
Nearly all of the groundwork that laid the foundation for the Russia investigation took place between June 2016 and May 2017. The first dossier report from former British spy Christopher Steele was on June 20 and the FBI began its investigation in late July. The five-month period of missing texts between Strzok and Page ends on May 17, 2017, the same day that Robert Mueller was appointed the special counsel in the Russia investigation. Of the texts that investigators have reviewed between Strzok and Page, many raise serious questions about serious political bias within the FBI as the two communicated about an “insurance policy” in case Trump won and a “secret society” within the FBI.
This is something we will be following very closely as we wait for all of the details to surface. It seems a little too convenient that all of the FBI cellphones deleted text messages during the time period in question.
https://twitter.com/PoliticalShort/status/956271732607692803
Now FBI saying thousands of FBI cellphones affected in a “glitch” that removed mueller staffs text messages?
Is this the same “glitch” that affected Hillary’s 33,000 emails too?
Nice try! The American people are not that stupid to believe your BS. Keep trying...
— Kambree (@KamVTV) January 24, 2018
https://twitter.com/hotfunkytown/status/956292918062473217
https://twitter.com/unscriptedmike/status/956261958868750336
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