The FBI ‘Failed To Preserve’ Text Messages Between Anti-Trump Agents

How does this even happen?

According to a report from The Daily Caller, the FBI “failed to preserve” months worth of text messages between anti-Trump FBI employees Peter Strzok and Lisa Page. Remember Peter Strzok? He’s the FBI agent who was removed from the Mueller probe for sending pro-Hillary, anti-Trump messages.

Strzok/Page texts obtained by Fox’s @JakeBGibson

“LP – Jesus. You should read this. And Trump should go f himself. Moment in Convention Glare Shakes Up Khans American Life https://t.co/1nZ11E3gBC

PS – God that’s a great article. Thanks for sharing. And F TRUMP.”

— Shannon Bream (@ShannonBream) December 13, 2017

Strzok/Page texts obtained by Fox’s @JakeBGibson – August 2016

“PS – Just went to a southern Virginia Walmart. I could SMELL the Trump support…

LP – Yep. Out to lunch with (redacted) We both hate everyone and everything.”

— Shannon Bream (@ShannonBream) December 13, 2017

Strzok/Page texts 10/20/16

PS – I am riled up. Trump is a f*cking idiot, is unable to provide a coherent answer.

PS – I CAN’T PULL AWAY, WHAT THE F*CK HAPPENED TO OUR COUNTRY (redacted)??!?!

LP – I don’t know. But we’ll get it back. …

— Shannon Bream (@ShannonBream) December 13, 2017

Uh-huh.

As it turns out, the FBI “failed to preserve” 5 months worth of those text messages.

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.

He said that texts are missing for the period between Dec. 14, 2016 and May 17, 2017.

Interesting, that.

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.

Another reason this is a big deal? May 17th is the day Mueller was appointed to head up the probe.

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.

How convenient.

“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 pages of additional text messages exchanged between Strzok and Page.

As usual, Rep. DeSantis is on it.

FBI Director Wray needs to provide an explanation for why the FBI deleted six months’ worth of Strozk-Page text messages sent during the Trump transition and early months of the Trump presidency. Was evidence about the anti-Trump “insurance policy” deleted? https://t.co/XB38xOZCbJ

— Ron DeSantis (@RepDeSantis) January 21, 2018

Answers would be nice.