In one of the biggest stories in a long time, the FBI says it is now missing five months worth of lovers Strzok - Page texts, perhaps 50,000, all in p

superbeets · Jan 23, 2018

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Donald J. Trump‏Verified account @realDonaldTrump 2h2 hours agoMore

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[FONT=&quot]In one of the biggest stories in a long time, the FBI says it is now missing five months worth of lovers Strzok - Page texts, perhaps 50,000, all in prime time. Wow!
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superbeets · Jan 23, 2018

[FONT=&quot][h=1]How Did the FBI Lose Five Months of Text Messages Between Two Trump-Hating Employees?[/h][/FONT]
[FONT=&quot]The bureau's claim of an IT failure is not sitting well with some Republicans.[/FONT]
[FONT=&quot]2:27 PM, JAN 22, 2018 | By ANDREW EGGER

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superbeets · Jan 23, 2018

You’ve got to feel for Robert Mueller.

The man overseeing the special investigation into Russian election meddling is by all accounts a non-partisan straight shooter, the model image of a public-minded civil servant. Drafted to lead politically polarizing investigation, working under the beady eyes of distrustful congressional Republicans, Mueller has striven to keep his team’s conduct as unimpeachable as possible by bringing on some of America’s sharpest legal minds to check his own work and keeping public comments to a minimum.

Imagine how Mueller feels, then, to have to answer so frequently for the partisans and incompetents surrounding him.

The special counsel’s biggest headache is the conduct of Peter Strzok, a former member of his team who was revealed in December to have exchanged anti-Trump text messages with another FBI employee, his girlfriend Lisa Page.

That controversy grew more heated this weekend, when the FBI reportedly informed congressional overseers that it had failed to retain more than five months of text messages between the Trump-loathing lovebirds.

On Saturday, Ron Johnson, chairman of the Senate Homeland Security Committee, sent a letter to FBI Director Christopher Wray asking him to explain why the FBI “did not preserve text messages between Ms. Page and Mr. Strzok between approximately December 14, 2016 and May 17, 2017.”

The FBI reportedly chalked the failure up as an IT problem, citing “misconfiguration issues related to rollouts, provisioning, and software upgrades that conflicted with the FBI’s collection capabilities.”

The convenient timing of the missing texts raises serious concerns. The two employees certainly would have had interesting things to say to one another as the early stages of the Russia investigation began to take shape, with FBI Director James Comey meeting repeatedly with Donald Trump, and as the president unexpectedly fired Comey in early May. Mueller was tapped to lead the investigation on May 17.

Whether Johnson characterized the FBI’s conduct fairly in his letter remains to be seen. But if those texts really are missing, there will be need for a far more exhaustive explanation than the FBI and its defenders have offered thus far. Without a convincing one, it'll be much harder for Democrats and the media to dismiss Republican concerns about impartiality of the investigators as the product of conspiracy theorists. At best, the FBI, which handles such electronic forensics as a matter of routine, seriously flubbed a perfunctory archival job—one that might have conveniently vanished damaging

information about the motivations and biases of the agents investigating President Trump. At worst, the FBI deliberately destroyed potentially damaging information, and lied about it to congressional investigators.

[FONT=&quot]Is that latter scenario likely? Perhaps not. Is it possible? Yes. Trump’s allies won’t rest until they get a satisfactory answer. As he enters the pivotal year of his investigation, that’s the last thing Mueller needs.[/FONT]