New revelations about two anti-Trump and pro-Clinton FBI officials were revealed on Thursday as previously undisclosed text messages between the two show that they were eager to “get around” the bureau’s rules for archiving and preserving text messages.
The newly-released texts between FBI agent Peter Strzok and FBI attorney Lisa Page appear to show that they were interested in getting around policies that dictated they had to preserve communications. The Washington Examiner reports:
Committee Chairman Sen. Ron Johnson, in a letter dated January 31 to Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein said, “According to text messages produced to the committee, Ms. Page and Mr. Strzok make references to communicating with other FBI employees via text message, phone call, email and voicemail. Additional text messages suggest that FBI officials used non-official email accounts and messaging programs to communicate about official business.”
Sara A. Carter reports that Strzok and Page discussed getting “new Apple iPhones, in lieu of their Samsung 5 government issued phones in text messages they exchanged in August 2016. They noted in the texts that the new phones would help keep their text messages from government collection after speaking with the FBI’s IT director.” Here are some of the new texts between Strzok and Page:
Strzok: “Hot damn. I’m happy to pilot that…we get around our security/monitoring issues?”
Page: “No, he’s proposing that we just stop following them. Apparently, the requirement to capture texts came from omb, but we’re the only org (I’m told) who is following that rule. His point is, if no one else is doing it why should we.”
Page: Helps that Dd had a terrible time with his phone [redacted] which made him concerned for our folks all over the place.
Page: These phones suck as much as they do because of the program we use to capture texts, full stop.
Strzok: No doubt.
Strzok: I’m not convinced short of OPR, that text capture capability really deters anything.
Strzok: If I want to copy/take classified, I’m sure as hell not going to do it on this phone.
Previously released text messages showed that Strzok and Page discussed an “insurance policy” in case Trump won the election as they communicated their clear hatred of the Republican nominee to each other through dozens of texts.