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U.S. senator says FBI lost crucial texts tied to Clinton probe

By Sarah N. Lynch

 

Former U.S. Secretary of State and 2016 Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton speaks during the LA Promise Fund's Girls Build Leadership summit in Los Angeles, California, U.S., December 15, 2017. REUTERS/Mario Anzuoni

 

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The Federal Bureau of Investigation has lost about five months worth of text messages between two staffers who worked on probes into former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton's emails and possible collusion between Russia and President Donald Trump's 2016 presidential campaign, according to a Republican lawmaker.

 

Wisconsin Senator Ron Johnson, who chairs the Senate Homeland Security Committee, revealed in a Jan. 20 letter that the FBI's technical system failed to preserve texts that were exchanged between Lisa Page, a lawyer, and Peter Strzok, an agent, between mid-December 2016 through mid-May of 2017.

 

A spokesman for the FBI and a spokeswoman for the Justice Department declined to comment.

 

Congressional Republicans have been focusing on Strzok and Page in recent weeks after learning the two had exchanged anti-Trump text messages on their work-issued cell phones.

 

Republicans have said the texts, which referred to Trump as an "idiot" and a "loathsome human," raised concerns the FBI is biased against Trump and may have given Clinton favorable treatment after deciding not to recommend criminal charges in connection with the probe into her use of a private email system while she was secretary of state.

 

Strzok and Page were involved in that investigation and also were briefly assigned to work with Special Counsel Robert Mueller on the Russia investigation.

 

After Mueller learned about the texts, Strzok was re-assigned to a different post. Page's 45-day detail on Mueller's team ended in July.

 

In his letter, Johnson said he learned of the software problem from the FBI on Jan. 19, after it gave 384 texts to the committee, one of several in Congress that recently launched inquiries into how the FBI handled the Clinton investigation.

 

"The loss of records from this period is concerning because it is apparent from other records that Mr. Strzok and Ms. Page communicated frequently about the investigation," Johnson wrote.

 

He cited examples, including an exchange between Strzok and Page that took place in May 2016, after it became apparent that Trump would likely be the Republican presidential candidate.

 

"Now the pressure really starts to finish [midyear exam]," Strzok wrote, in what Johnson's letter says is a reference to the Clinton investigation.

"It sure does," Page responded.

 

In his letter, Johnson asked the FBI to follow up with more details about the scope of the lost records, and to tell the committee whether it has conducted searches of their non-government issued devices.

 

(Reporting by Sarah N. Lynch; Editing by Paul Simao)

 

-- © Copyright Reuters 2018-01-22

[Samui Bodoh]

Hillary Clinton is a failed Presidential candidate who last held public office in 2012 (2013?).

 

Why does anyone care about her now? Are we going to see a probe into Dukakis as well? Or Mondale?

 

Elections over, Trumpians, your guy won. Time to move on.

[Briggsy]

10 minutes ago, Samui Bodoh said:

Hillary Clinton is a failed Presidential candidate who last held public office in 2012 (2013?).

 

Why does anyone care about her now? Are we going to see a probe into Dukakis as well? Or Mondale?

 

Elections over, Trumpians, your guy won. Time to move on.

Because they need a narrative to provide a distraction to the huge elephant in the room, Traitor Trump destroying the U.S. Government under the orders of Putin whilst selling out the American people for his own enrichment. Hillary Clinton is the go-to bogeywoman for Fox News and various Trump-supporting websites. For fans of Fox, there can never be enough Hillary Clinton scandals. They need them to feed their prejudices.

 

On a psychological level, it probably feeds very nicely into anxieties and senses of grievance for those who feel threatened or discriminated against by educated women, powerful women, urban Americans, wealthy people or anybody articulate. Any one of those or any combination will suffice.

 

Expect more Hillary Clinton stories. Fox has a whole batch of unused ones sitting on the shelf waiting to be trotted out whenever there is more bad Trump news not to report.

[ELVIS123456]

Lost or 'cleaned' ???  Interesting that so many things and so many people associated with the Clintons have been 'eliminated'.  

[canuckamuck]

Ha ha, lost. Sure, pull the other one. 

Another beam of light falls on the reality of the American power base.

[irwinfc]

wow! how convenient and unsurprising.

[Jingthing]

1 hour ago, Samui Bodoh said:

Hillary Clinton is a failed Presidential candidate who last held public office in 2012 (2013?).

 

Why does anyone care about her now? Are we going to see a probe into Dukakis as well? Or Mondale?

 

Elections over, Trumpians, your guy won. Time to move on.

Resist long walks in the forest.

Impeach Hillary Clinton ASAP! 

Edited January 22, 2018 by Jingthing

[johndudorn]

1 hour ago, Briggsy said:

Because they need a narrative to provide a distraction to the huge elephant in the room, Traitor Trump destroying the U.S. Government under the orders of Putin whilst selling out the American people for his own enrichment. Hillary Clinton is the go-to bogeywoman for Fox News and various Trump-supporting websites. For fans of Fox, there can never be enough Hillary Clinton scandals. They need them to feed their prejudices.

 

On a psychological level, it probably feeds very nicely into anxieties and senses of grievance for those who feel threatened or discriminated against by educated women, powerful women, urban Americans, wealthy people or anybody articulate. Any one of those or any combination will suffice.

 

Expect more Hillary Clinton stories. Fox has a whole batch of unused ones sitting on the shelf waiting to be trotted out whenever there is more bad Trump news not to report.

Wisconsin Senator Ron Johnson, who chairs the Senate Homeland Security Committee, revealed in a Jan. 20 letter that the FBI's technical system failed to preserve texts that were exchanged between Lisa Page, a lawyer, and Peter Strzok, an agent, between mid-December 2016 through mid-May of 2017.

 

This is not about Trump or Hillary, it's about a rogue  FBI agents and a lawyer working behind the scenes to damage a then-candidate Trump. Looking to create a narrative that would harm "our" president if he won the election, because they did not like him. If you think this kind of activity by our FBI is OK. Then you sir are the traitor! 

[dcutman]

2 hours ago, Samui Bodoh said:

Hillary Clinton is a failed Presidential candidate who last held public office in 2012 (2013?).

 

Why does anyone care about her now? Are we going to see a probe into Dukakis as well? Or Mondale?

 

Elections over, Trumpians, your guy won. Time to move on.

Just because Obama and the Loretta lynch justice department conspired to covered up her crimes does not mean she is off the hook.

[Silurian]

1 hour ago, johndudorn said:

This is not about Trump or Hillary, it's about a rogue  FBI agents and a lawyer working behind the scenes to damage a then-candidate Trump. Looking to create a narrative that would harm "our" president if he won the election, because they did not like him. If you think this kind of activity by our FBI is OK. Then you sir are the traitor! 

 

Yep, time to start the FBI agent witch hunts. They need to scour out all those damn Clinton loving FBI agents. Republican members of Congress are now suggesting that all FBI agents that have a positive opinion of Clinton to be investigated in detail and to also make sure they are not included in any Russian investigations. Funny though, FBI agents that have a positive opinion of the current POTUS are okay to be on the Russian investigation. Sure, no potential bias there. 

 

FBI agents are just like any US citizen. They have political views. They vote. But they are held to rigid standards of conduct when they are operating as a FBI agent. Let them do their job and not have them worry about some crazed Republican witch hunt. If there are FBI agents with an agenda, it should be handled internally. Is there some reason that Christopher Wray (FBI director appointed by the current POTUS) is not trustworthy? Is he not responsible for the agents under his care? If Republicans don't believe Wray can do his job, then maybe they should think about replacing him.

 

 

Edited January 22, 2018 by Silurian

[chilli42]

There are 4 or 5 things which need to be solved to secure the long term well being of the USA.  None of them have anything to do with Hillary Clinton or Trump links to Russia.  These are simply issues to divide people and to keep them from focusing on what matters.  Disgraceful.

[William C F Pierce]

A point most are missing, is not Hilary Clinton associated texts, but the Trump Russian interference connection texts that have gone missing. Question: does it help get him off the hook from being impeached.

[KBsinter]

8 hours ago, William C F Pierce said:

A point most are missing, is not Hilary Clinton associated texts, but the Trump Russian interference connection texts that have gone missing. Question: does it help get him off the hook from being impeached.

Where did you read that,...................?

[MajarTheLion]

16 hours ago, ELVIS123456 said:

Lost or 'cleaned' ???  Interesting that so many things and so many people associated with the Clintons have been 'eliminated'.  

 

Amen, brutha. Nothing was lost. It was intentionally disposed of. The swamp is getting more desperate to protect its denizens.

[lannarebirth]

12 hours ago, William C F Pierce said:

A point most are missing, is not Hilary Clinton associated texts, but the Trump Russian interference connection texts that have gone missing. Question: does it help get him off the hook from being impeached.

That's funny. I don't even respond to text messages. I figure if it is not important enough to call me about it is not important. The future of the government down to someone deleting a text message. Hilarious.

[MajarTheLion]

12 hours ago, William C F Pierce said:

A point most are missing, is not Hilary Clinton associated texts, but the Trump Russian interference connection texts that have gone missing. Question: does it help get him off the hook from being impeached.

Link?

[MajarTheLion]

29 minutes ago, lannarebirth said:

That's funny. I don't even respond to text messages. I figure if it is not important enough to call me about it is not important. The future of the government down to someone deleting a text message. Hilarious.

I see. So from this day on, people can do whatever they want via text. They can conspire against a president, a candidate, they can engage in a murder plot. It's no big deal, it's just "a" text message.

 

Meanwhile, back on planet Earth, people understand it's not "a" text message, but several months' worth of text messages. Big difference.

[lannarebirth]

1 minute ago, MajarTheLion said:

I see. So from this day on, people can do whatever they want via text. They can conspire against a president, a candidate, they can engage in a murder plot. It's no big deal, it's just "a" text message.

 

Meanwhile, back on planet Earth, people understand it's not "a" text message, but several months' worth of text messages. Big difference.

 

Well, if text messages become important the first thing I would expect to hear is that no one really knows who has sent a text message. Sure, you can know which device or account it was sent from but not who actually sent it. That would be the likely defense. It is enough for partisans and biased media to grab on to, whichever side is accused.

[MajarTheLion]

1 minute ago, lannarebirth said:

 

Well, if text messages become important the first thing I would expect to hear is that no one really knows who has sent a text message. Sure, you can know which device or account it was sent from but not who actually sent it. That would be the likely defense. It is enough for partisans and biased media to grab on to, whichever side is accused.

Yes, that can be a defense. I didn't send all those text messages! Someone grabbed my phone and did it. Yeah, an FBI agent saying that, essentially saying they can't even maintain control over their phone but should continue in law enforcement. That won't pass the smell test. It already reeks. But what am I saying. It's just at text. No big deal.

[Khun Han]

The FBI doesn't lose large tracts of recorded information such as this. It gets rid of them for a reason.

[thaibeachlovers]

On ‎1‎/‎22‎/‎2018 at 6:30 AM, Samui Bodoh said:

Hillary Clinton is a failed Presidential candidate who last held public office in 2012 (2013?).

 

Why does anyone care about her now? Are we going to see a probe into Dukakis as well? Or Mondale?

 

Elections over, Trumpians, your guy won. Time to move on.

What are you on about? It's about 2 FBI agents that were biased against Trump working on an investigation against Trump.

Clinton is incidental to this.

[thaibeachlovers]

8 hours ago, Khun Han said:

The FBI doesn't lose large tracts of recorded information such as this. It gets rid of them for a reason.

They are apparently trying to blame the phones now. As always, the cover up will prove more embarrassing ( and in this case criminal ) than the actual error.

 

[thaibeachlovers]

9 hours ago, MajarTheLion said:

Yes, that can be a defense. I didn't send all those text messages! Someone grabbed my phone and did it. Yeah, an FBI agent saying that, essentially saying they can't even maintain control over their phone but should continue in law enforcement. That won't pass the smell test. It already reeks. But what am I saying. It's just at text. No big deal.

Not a defence with Page and Strzok, as apparently over 5,000 texts sent. I believe they were so blatent about what they said on a medium that could be recovered because they never believed Clinton would lose, and nothing would ever be investigated.

Interesting times. It would make a fantastic novel with a huge cliffhanger at the end. I believe that if they spin this out till the election, and somehow the Dems took over congress, all the committees looking into this become controlled by the Dems, and everything gets buried.

Sessions needs to pull finger and start doing something, but will he?

[metisdead]

An inflammatory post has been removed. 

[thaibeachlovers]

11 hours ago, lannarebirth said:

That's funny. I don't even respond to text messages. I figure if it is not important enough to call me about it is not important. The future of the government down to someone deleting a text message. Hilarious.

It's not A text message. It's hundreds that are required to be saved by the FBI as done on FBI time.

[mrwebb8825]

On 1/22/2018 at 9:33 AM, Silurian said:

Is there some reason that Christopher Wray (FBI director appointed by the current POTUS) is not trustworthy? Is he not responsible for the agents under his care? If Republicans don't believe Wray can do his job, then maybe they should think about replacing him.

Nobody is saying Wray isn't trustworthy. What they are saying is he wasn't in charge during Obama's last year. He wasn't in charge during President Trump's 1st few months. ALL of this happened before and shortly after President Trump took office. There's plenty of other threads for you to spew your GOP hating nonsense.

[mike324]

I wonder how common these text message are lost, it seems pretty common. The republicans are trying to pain this as a cover up and FBI being bias. Trying to divert the attention away from the Trump investigation. Guess Trump is in the hot seat, if he is innocent, why fear the investigations? Only those guilty have something to hide.

[riclag]

     I'm not surprised that some of the comment's  here actually believe that this is totally about exposing HC. On the contrary, when everything is laid out,it's very likely to expose the hypocrisy of some in the past administration and their efforts to conspire to delegitimize  a democratically elected POTUS.

 

What transpired  between December 14, 2016 through mid-May,17 of 2017. On Dec 9, Obama ordered U.S. intelligence agencies to conduct a full review of the cyber-attacks before Inauguration Day. On Dec 14, is the starting day that the  FBI couldn't preserve  their agents text messages(because of tech issues they said).  The 5 months of text messages that where lost ended on May 17 when Mueller was hired.

 

What events took place during those dates and what was the text messages about between those FBI agents , that in past texts talked about having a insurance policy to stop DT from becoming elected? 

 

 

 

[impulse]

2 hours ago, mike324 said:

I wonder how common these text message are lost, it seems pretty common. The republicans are trying to pain this as a cover up and FBI being bias. Trying to divert the attention away from the Trump investigation. Guess Trump is in the hot seat, if he is innocent, why fear the investigations? Only those guilty have something to hide.

 

Ask the NSA.  They still have them.  Along with every text everyone in the world has sent since they strung them wires along the Pecos Trail.

 

Edit:  And if the NSA won't give 'em up, call the Ecuador Embassy in London and make a deal...

 

 

Edited January 23, 2018 by impulse

[sirineou]

Pickpockets work in pairs, One bumps in to you and distracts you while the other picks your pocket. 

 

 I have no love lost for Hillary,in fact nothing will please me more than to see both Trump and Hillary in Jail. But one is president and one is not, and the one that is president has his hand on my wallet and more.

 

So for the time being , let's keep an eye on our wallets