The FBI says it has not requested information from the personal email accounts of Peter Strzok and Lisa Page, the two bureau officials who exchanged anti-President Donald Trump text messages while working on the investigation into possible Trump campaign collusion with Russia.
The disclosure was made in a letter sent May 2 to Iowa Sen. Chuck Grassley, the chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee. Grassley, a Republican, questioned why the bureau has not sought Strzok and Page’s personal email records, noting they referred to using private email accounts to conduct government-related business.
“FBI has not requested from Ms. Page or Mr. Strzok any information from their personal email accounts, nor has the FBI conducted searches of non-FBI issued communications devices or non-FBI email accounts associated with Mr. Strzok or Ms. Page,” Charles A. Thorley, the acting assistant director at the FBI’s office of congressional affairs, wrote to Grassley.
Strzok and Page worked closely on both the Trump-Russia investigation and the Clinton email probe. Their politically biased texts were discovered as part of a Justice Department inspector general’s investigation into the FBI’s handling of the Clinton email investigation. The Justice Department has provided Congress with thousands of text messages Strzok and Page exchanged during the course of both investigations.
Grassley has pointed to text messages Strzok and Page exchanged “show substantial reason” to believe the two FBI officials conducted government work on their private email accounts.
In one exchange, Strzok wrote to Page: “Gmailed you two drafts of what I’m thinking of sending Bill, would appreciate your thoughts.”
In another text, Strzok wrote: “Sent something to your gmail, work-related.”
“Although, as your letter notes, the FBI is not ‘obligated’ to collect all communications between employees; it is obligated to collect and preserve federal records,” Grassley wrote Friday to FBI Director Christopher Wray.
Grassley asked Wray why the FBI has not requested Strzok and Page to turn over any government records they may have on their personal devices. He also wants to know why the FBI has apparently not conducted a search of Strzok and Page’s non-FBI email accounts.
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