An FBI agent expressed skepticism that the special counsel’s investigation into Russian meddling would uncover any serious wrongdoing in a text message to another agent. “You and I both know the odds are nothing. If I thought it was likely, I’d be there no question. I hesitate in part because of my gut sense and concern there’s no big there there,” he wrote.
The agent, Peter Strzok, was responding to another agent, Lisa Page. Page was trying to convince Strzok not to join special counsel’s Robert Mueller’s team. Strzok was reluctant to make the move but said he was inclined to out of “a sense of unfinished business.”
“Now I need to fix and finish it,” Strzok wrote.
Text messages between Strzok and Page have received scrutiny over the past several months as it was revealed both held strong anti-Donald-Trump views and spoke about it often during the 2016 election. Text messages between the two show Donald Trump being referred to as “an idiot,” and a “loathsome human,” among other things. In another text, Strzok writes that Hillary Clinton should win the election 100 million votes to zero. “I know,” Page responds.
Adding to the controversy is that Strzok played a key role in the FBI’s investigation into Hillary Clinton’s use of a private email server and the investigation into possible Russian collusion with the Trump campaign during the election. Strzok was part of Mueller’s team but was removed after the text messages came to Mueller’s attention. Page was also a part of Mueller’s team but had been previously reassigned.
Republicans in Congress have asked the FBI for all of the text messages sent and received by the agents over a period of time that covers the investigation into the Trump campaign. The FBI notified Congress earlier this week that it has “failed to preserve” Strzok’s and Page’s text messages.
Due to “misconfiguration issues related to rollouts, provisioning, and software upgrades…data that should have been automatically collected and retained for long-term storage and retrieval was not collected,” the Justice Department wrote.