Grassley, Johnson Ask DOJ IG Horowitz about Missing FBI Text Messages
WASHINGTON
– Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Chuck Grassley and Homeland Security and
Governmental Affairs Committee Chairman Ron Johnson wrote a letter to the
Justice Department Office of Inspector General Tuesday regarding the revelation
that the FBI did not preserve text messages between Peter Strzok and Lisa Page
for the time period between Dec. 14, 2016, and May 17, 2017.
In
a previous letter to Sens. Grassley and Johnson, IG Michael Horowitz stated his
office obtained text messages from Nov. 30, 2016, through July 28, 2017 without
disclosing the missing texts. The Senators’ letter is asking the DOJ Inspector
General (1) to explain why he did not previously disclose FBI’s failure to
provide the missing texts, and (2) to inform the committees about the steps the
IG is taking to investigate the circumstances surrounding the missing texts.
The
letter can be found here
and below:
January 23,
2018
The
Honorable Michael E. Horowitz
Inspector
General
U.S.
Department of Justice
950
Pennsylvania Avenue, N.W.
Washington, D.C. 20530-0001
Washington, D.C. 20530-0001
Dear
Inspector General Horowitz:
The
Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs and the Committee on
the Judiciary are conducting oversight of the Federal Bureau of Investigation
(FBI) and the FBI’s investigation of classified information on former Secretary
of State Hillary Clinton’s private email server. We write to request
information about the loss of FBI records connected to this investigation.
On
January 12, 2017, the Department of Justice Office of Inspector General (DOJ
OIG) announced an investigation of “allegations that Department or FBI policies
or procedures were not followed in connection with, or in actions leading up to
or related to, the FBI Director’s public announcement on July 5, 2016, and the
Director’s letters to Congress on October 28 and November 6, 2016 and that
certain underlying investigative decisions were based on improper
considerations.”
On
December 6, 2017, we wrote to you concerning the DOJ OIG discovery of text
messages between FBI employees Lisa Page and Peter Strzok. Your response, dated
December 13, 2017, suggested that DOJ OIG received all text messages between
Ms. Page and Mr. Strzok from November 30, 2016 to July 28, 2017. You wrote:
In
gathering evidence for the OIG’s ongoing 2016 election review, we requested,
consistent with standard practice, that the FBI produce text messages from the
FBI-issued phones of certain FBI employees involved in the Clinton email
investigation based on search terms we provided. After finding a number of
politically-oriented text messages between Page and Strzok, the OIG sought from
the FBI all text messages between Strzok and Page from their FBI-issued phones
through November 30, 2016, which covered the entire period of the Clinton
e-mail server investigation. The FBI produced these text messages on July 20,
2017. Following our review of those text messages, the OIG expanded our request
to the FBI to include all text messages between Strzok and Page from November
30, 2016, through the date of the document request, which was July 28, 2017.
The OIG received these additional messages on August 10, 2017.
On
January 19, 2018, the Department of Justice produced to Congress 384 pages of
text messages exchanged between Ms. Page and Mr. Strzok. According to a cover
letter accompanying the documents, the FBI did not preserve text messages
between Ms. Page and Mr. Strzok between approximately December 14, 2016 and May
17, 2017. The cover letter explained:
The
Department wants to bring to your attention that the FBI’s technical system for
retaining text messages sent and received on FBI mobile devices failed to
preserve text messages for Mr. Strzok and Ms. Page from December 14, 2016 to
approximately to May 17, 2017. The FBI has informed [the Department of Justice]
that many FBI-provided Samsung 5 mobile devices did not capture or store text
messages due to misconfiguration issues related to rollouts, provisioning, and
software upgrades that conflicted with the FBI’s collection capabilities. The
result was that data that should have been automatically collected and retained
for long-term storage and retrieval was not collected.
These
statements—that DOJ OIG requested “all text messages between Strzok and Page
from November 30, 2016, [to] July 28, 2017,” received them on August 10, 2017,
and that the FBI “failed to preserve text messages from Mr. Strzok and Ms. Page
from December 14, 2016, to approximately May 17, 2017”—need to be reconciled.
During a phone call on January 22, 2018, DOJ OIG staff indicated that the FBI
did not produce text messages between Mr. Strzok and Ms. Page from December 14,
2016, to May 17, 2017.
Accordingly,
to understand fully the scope of text messages in the possession of the DOJ
OIG, we respectfully request that you please provide the following information
and material:
1.
Is it accurate that the FBI failed to provide to
DOJ OIG text messages between Mr. Strzok and Ms. Page from December 14, 2016,
to May 17, 2017 due to technical errors that prevented the texts from being
archived in the FBI’s records preservation system?
a.
Has the FBI also been unable to provide the texts
from any other source, such as the physical phones, carrier records, or any
other source?
b.
Has the OIG requested texts of other FBI personnel
during the same time period? If so, has the FBI also been unable to produce
texts of others as well or is the missing text problem limited to these two
employees?
c.
On what date did the OIG request access to messages
for that time period from the FBI?
d.
Did the FBI notify the OIG of the missing text
messages between Mr. Strzok and Ms. Page? If so, on what date? If not, how and
on what date did the OIG discover that messages were missing?
e.
Did the DOJ OIG notify the office of the Deputy
Attorney General of the missing text messages between Mr. Strzok and Ms. Page?
If so, on what date?
f.
Please explain why the DOJ OIG did not notify
Congress of the missing text messages.
2.
Please produce all communications between DOJ OIG,
DOJ, and the FBI referring or relating to the missing text messages.
3.
The Attorney General said in a statement yesterday
that your office was already undertaking a review of the circumstances that led
to the FBI’s failure to preserve and provide texts to the OIG. On what date did
that review begin, and what is the scope and methodology of that OIG review?
4.
Has the DOJ OIG been successful in retrieving any
of the missing text messages from any other source?
5.
Does the OIG have the necessary authorities,
resources, and capabilities to obtain the missing texts from another source? If
not, please identify any gaps in your office’s ability to do so.
6.
In the most recent batch of texts, Mr. Strzok and
Ms. Page frequently indicate that they are also communicating about
work-related matters via apparently personal accounts on Apple’s encrypted
iMessage texting system, as well as through Gmail. Does the OIG have the
necessary authorities, resources, and capabilities to obtain any federal
records that may reside in those personal accounts? If not, please explain any
gaps in your ability to do so.
7.
Has the OIG asked Mr. Strzok or Ms. Page to
voluntarily provide any information from their personal accounts? If so, have
they been cooperative? If the OIG has not asked, please explain why not.
8.
Has the DOJ OIG interviewed Mr. Strzok or Ms. Page?
9.
Has the DOJ OIG interviewed employees of the FBI’s
Information Technology office regarding the loss of text messages?
Please
respond to this letter as soon as possible but no later than January 29, 2018.
Thank
you for your attention to this matter. If you have any questions about this
request, please contact Kyle Brosnan or Brian Downey of the Senate Homeland
Security and Governmental Affairs Committee staff at (202) 224-4751 or Josh
Flynn-Brown of the Senate Judiciary Committee staff at (202) 224-5225.
Sincerely,
Ron
Johnson Charles E. Grassley
Chairman
Chairman
Committee
on Homeland Security Committee on the Judiciary
and
Governmental Affairs
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