FBI not requesting personal accounts from agents who exchanged text messages

A top FBI official told Congress this week that the bureau has not requested text messages between FBI officials Peter Strzok and Lisa Page, who faced criticism after it was revealed they exchanged messages critical of President Trump.

Charles Thorley, the acting assistant director of the FBI’s Office of Congressional Affairs, said in a letter to Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa) this week that FBI employees are required to follow record-keeping policies when communications “constitute records under the Federal Records Act,” Fox News reported.

However, Thorley said that the FBI does not have to collect all communications between its employees.

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“Thus, the FBI has not requested from Ms. Page or Mr. Strzok any information from their personal email accounts, nor has the FBI conducted searches of non-FBI-issued communications devices or non-FBI email accounts associated with Mr. Strzok or Ms. Page,” he said, according to Fox.

Grassley has said that Thorley’s letter does not answer some of the questions he brought up in the past.

In a letter to FBI Director Christopher Wray on Friday, Grassley said that “work-related communications on non-government systems could shed more light on how the FBI handled the Clinton investigation” and argued that such communication would constitute federal records the FBI is obligated to preserve.

In December, the Justice Department released 90 pages of texts between Stzrok, an FBI agent, and Page, an FBI lawyer, who were romantically involved. The texts, which the Justice Department turned over to Congress, were obtained by the department’s inspector general.

But Grassley has continued to question why the FBI has not requested work-related material that was shared on personal devices, citing texts referring to the agents using personal accounts, and why the FBI hasn’t searched Strzok’s and Page’s nonwork devices for such material.

Strzok served on special counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation into Russia’s election meddling but was removed last year after the anti-Trump messages between him and Page were revealed. Strzok also worked on the agency’s probe into former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s use of a private email server.

Page joined James Baker, the agency’s former top lawyer, in resigning from the bureau on Friday.