The Department of Justice's inspector general clarified details Thursday regarding the anti-Trump texts that were exchanged between two members of the FBI's Russia investigation.
According to Fox News, DOJ Inspector General Michael Horowitz's office initially asked to see the text messages on government-issued phones of people on the FBI's Hillary Clinton email investigation. That led to the discovery of messages sent between FBI special agent Peter Strzok and FBI lawyer Lisa Page.
The messages, 375 of which were published this week, seemed to be pro-Clinton and anti-Trump and were sent from the 2016 election cycle through this summer. Strzok was taken off the Russia investigation team after the discovery, while Page had already left the team.
Facts that Horowitz revealed in a letter to Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Chuck Grassley and Senate Homeland Security Committee Chairman Ron Johnson:
- Horowitz's office found "politically oriented" messages in that initial search, after which he requested copies of all messages the pair sent to each other through November 2016, and later from December 2016-July 28, 2017. In total, more than 10,000 messages were turned over.
- The FBI provided the first batch of messages to Horowitz on July 20. Seven days later, special counsel Robert Mueller and Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein were told about the messages.
- The final batch of messages was received by Horowitz's office on Aug. 10.
One message in particular is being heavily scrutinized by Republicans, who said it potentially reveals the existence of a conspiracy to either prevent Donald Trump from winning the presidential election or somehow take him down now that he's in office:
"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. "It's like an insurance policy in the unlikely event you die before you're 40."
It's believed that "Andy" may have been in reference to Andrew McCabe, the deputy director of the FBI.
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