The FBI will not attempt to obtain messages exchanged on the personal devices of Peter Strzok and Lisa Page, the FBI officials who came under fire after it was revealed they exchanged text messages critical of President Trump, despite requests to do so from a top Republican senator.
Charles Thorley, the acting assistant director of the FBI’s office of congressional affairs, wrote in a letter this week to Senate Judiciary Chairman Chuck Grassley, R-Iowa, that FBI employees are “required to adhere to record keeping policies in place where communications constitute records under the Federal Records Act.”
He added in the letter that “the FBI is not otherwise obligated to collect and/or retain all communications between its employees.”
“Thus, the FBI has not requested from Ms. Page or Mr. Strzok any information from their personal email accounts, nor as the FBI conducted searches of non-FBI-issued communications devices or non-FBI email accounts associated with Mr. Strzok or Ms. Page,” he said.
But Grassley argued that the FBI’s letter did not address many of the questions he had asked in a January letter about communications between Strzok and Page.
“The work-related communications on non-government systems could shed more light on how the FBI handled the Clinton investigation and would constitute federal records that the FBI would be obligated to retrieve and preserve under the Federal Records Act,” Grassley said in a Friday letter to FBI Director Christopher Wray.
As a result, Grassley pressed for answers on why the agency has not requested official work-related materials from personal devices and email accounts. He also wants to know why the FBI has not searched non-FBI devices and accounts associated with Strzok and Page for official work-related material, among other things.
Grassley wrote that he expects a response by May 18.
Strzok was 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 and Page exchanged text messages that appeared to be critical of Trump. He also was a lead investigator in the investigation into former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s unauthorized private email server.
Page too was once a member of the special counsel team.
It was revealed Friday that Page would be stepping down from her post, along with James Baker, who was the FBI’s top lawyer until he was reassigned late last year, the New York Times reports.
The FBI did not immediately respond to the Washington Examiner for comment.
