Conservative watchdog group Judicial Watch announced on Wednesday that it filed a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit against the Justice Department for text messages and other records related to Peter Strzok, a top FBI counterintelligence agent who was part of special counsel Robert Mueller’s Russia inquiry team before being demoted after it was found that he exchanged text messages that were critical of President Trump with FBI attorney Lisa Page.
The Justice Department produced 384 pages of text messages that were sent between the two employees earlier this month, but the FBI said that text messages sent between Dec. 14, 2016 and May 17, 2017 were not preserved due to “misconfiguration issues.” The five-month period includes the presidential transition and the initiation of Mueller’s investigation.
But Judicial Watch doesn’t believe the text messages are unavailable.
“I don’t believe for one minute that the Strzok-Page texts are really missing,” Judicial Watch president Tom Fitton said 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.”
Strzok, who was also a lead investigator in the investigation into former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s unauthorized private email server, was reportedly removed from Muller’s team in August and moved to a human resources position. Page was also previously a member of the special counsel team.
Judicial Watch is seeking all records of communications from Feb. 1, 2015 to the present between Strzok and Page, including emails, texts, and instant chats, along with their travel requests and expense reports.
