Conservative watchdog group Judicial Watch announced Wednesday it has sued the Justice Department to obtain text messages and other records of FBI officials Peter Strzok and Lisa Page through a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit.
The group sued after the DOJ failed to respond to a December 4, 2017 FOIA request for those records. They requested “all records of communication” including but not limited to emails, texts messages, and instant chats.
It has also requested all travel requests, travel authorizations, travel vouchers and expense reports of Strzok and those same records for Page, between February 1, 2015 to the present.
Judicial Watch said the text messages are of public interest because Strzok and Page were “key investigators in the Clinton email and Trump Russia collusion investigations.”
The Justice Department inspector general first discovered the texts while investigating whether political bias played a role in the FBI’s Clinton email and Russia investigations. The two were carrying on an extramarital affair, and had exchanged anti-Trump and pro-Clinton text messages.
According to Judicial Watch:
Strzok reportedly oversaw the FBI’s interviews of former National Security Adviser, General Michael Flynn; changed former FBI Director James Comey’s language about Hillary Clinton’s actions regarding her illicit email server from ‘grossly negligent’ to ‘extremely careless’; played a lead role in the FBI’s interview of Clinton; and is suspected of being responsible for using the unverified dossier to obtain a FISA warrant in order to spy on President Trump’s campaign.
The DOJ recently informed Congress that five months worth of text messages, between December 14, 2016 and May 17, 2017, were missing. Judicial Watch President Tom Fitton said the group intends to find those “missing” texts:
I don’t believe for one minute that the Strzok-Page texts are really missing. 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
Judicial Watch said the text messages are potentially responsive to several of its pending lawsuits, but the FBI has yet to produce “any of the records, explain the missing records to the courts, or otherwise be forthcoming about these newly disclosed materials.”