The Justice Department has recovered missing text messages from former FBI officials Peter Strzok and Lisa Page that will be included in an inspector general’s report to be released on Thursday.
One of the text messages appears to show that Strzok promised that he would help prevent Donald Trump from becoming president. But the message is conspicuously missing from a batch of thousands of texts that have already been provided to Congress.
A Justice Department spokesperson was unable to say why the message, which was sent on Aug. 9, 2016, was missing from the previous document productions.
The inspector general recovered the message along with thousands of others as part of its investigation into the FBI’s handling of the Hillary Clinton email investigation.
The investigation led to the discovery of politically charged comments between Strzok and Page, both of who worked on the Clinton probe and the investigation into Russian meddling in the 2016 election. (RELATED: Lisa Page Resigned From FBI)
The new messages were recovered in May. The office of Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein was told about the two messages on June 8, according to a Justice Department letter sent to Congress on Thursday.
One of the newly recovered text messages reportedly shows that Strzok told Page that “we’ll stop” Trump from becoming president. (RELATED: STRZOK: ‘We’ll Stop’ Trump Presidency)
“(Trump’s) not ever going to become president, right? Right?!” Page wrote to Strzok in an Aug. 9, 2016 text message.
“No. No he’s not. We’ll stop it,” Strzok replied, according to Bloomberg News, which obtained a summary of the inspector general’s report.
Page’s initial message is included in a batch of thousands of texts that have already been provided to Congress.
Strzok’s response, however, is missing from that batch of messages.
Strzok-Page text messages
A Justice Department official told The Daily Caller News Foundation that the office of the inspector general recovered the text messages using its own equipment rather than the FBI’s.
The FBI has acknowledged that it was unable to recover tens of thousands of texts between Page and Strzok from Dec. 13, 2016 to May 17, 2017 due to a technical glitch. Some of those messages were recovered and given to Congress.
The missing Strzok text cited in the inspector general’s report was sent well before the glitch affected FBI servers.
The Justice Department official was not sure whether the Strzok text was deleted or whether they it missing due to other technical issues.
Strzok’s lawyer did not respond to a request for comment.
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