After the FBI announced a number of text messages between FBI agents Peter Strzok and Lisa Page were "lost," the folks over at Judicial Watch weren't buying it.
.@FBI says texts are missing? Don't believe it. As @JudicialWatch has found with "missing" and "deleted" Hillary Clinton and Lois Lerner emails, Deep State statements about "missing" electronic documents often turn out not to be true.
— Tom Fitton (@TomFitton) January 22, 2018
Now, they've issued a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit against the FBI demanding a number of documents be turned over.
Here's what they're looking for:
All records of communications, including but not limited to, emails, text messages and instant chats, between FBI official Peter Strozk and FBI attorney Lisa Page;
All travel requests, travel authorizations, travel vouchers and expense reports of Peter Strozk;
All travel requests, travel authorizations, travel vouchers and expense reports of Lisa Page.
The lawsuit comes after the FBI ignored a December 2017 FOIA request for the information.
“I don’t believe for one minute that the Strzok-Page texts are really missing,” Judicial Watch President Tom Fitton released in a statement. “The IRS told us that Lois Lerner’s emails were ‘missing,’ and we forced them to admit they existed and deliver them to us. The State Department hid the Clinton emails but our FOIA lawsuits famously blew open that cover-up. We fully intend to get the ‘missing’ Strzok and Page documents. And it is shameful the FBI and DOJ have been playing shell games with these smoking gun text messages. Frankly, FBI Director Wray needs to stop the stonewalling.”
On Wednesday afternoon, the FBI said thousands of employees had their text messages disappear during a computer glitch between December 2016 and May 2017. From Fox News:
Thousands of FBI cellphones were affected by the technical glitch that the DOJ says prevented five months’ worth of text messages between FBI officials Peter Strzok and Lisa Page from being stored or uploaded into the bureau’s archive system, federal law enforcement officials tell Fox News.
The missing messages have been at the center of a storm of controversy on Capitol Hill, after the DOJ notified congressional committees that there is a gap in records between Dec. 14, 2016 and May 17, 2017. Strzok and Page are under scrutiny after it was revealed that the former Robert Mueller team members exchanged a series of anti-Trump texts during the presidential campaign.
The gap in records covered a crucial period, raising suspicion among GOP lawmakers as to how those messages disappeared.
But Fox News is told that the glitch affected the phones of “nearly” 10 percent of the FBI’s 35,000 employees.
The FBI is reportedly working to restore the lost data and to track down the devices that were used.