Robert Mueller. Getty/The Hill.
The FBI has lost six months worth of texts between the FBI agents fired from the Mueller probe accused of anti-Trump bias. The Hill. Agents Peter Stzork and Lisa Page have already been exposed as anti-Trump via their texts to each other and Stzork was removed from the Mueller probe because of it. The FBI claims that they lost the text messages, which were on FBI issued phones, due to “rollouts, provisioning, and software upgrades.” This supposedly resulted in those text messages not being collected. 384 pages of new texts were released that were not from the critical period between December 14th, 2016 and May 17th, 2017.
My Comment:
Unbelievable. Those texts were critical evidence in possible criminal charges for Stzork and Page. They both seem to be knee deep in the FISA memo drama that is currently engulfing Washington. The loss of those texts could be the difference for a long prison term for those two and freedom. To say this is unacceptable is a massive understatement. It doesn't matter if these texts were genuinely lost or if they were deleted on purpose, the people that are responsible for it deserve to be fired at the very least.
Do I buy the FBI's excuse? Not really. It seems very unlikely that there would be a period of six months where phones weren't keeping data because of upgrades. I know my phone has kept every text I have sent and I am guessing the FBI phones are even harder to remove. My guess is that these texts were deleted on purpose.
I mean I guess it is possible that the FBI lost these text messages but that seems extremely unlikely. If that was the case we would have heard about it before now. It would also have effected way more phones than just Stzork and Page. It's unclear if that happened or not, but if it had I think they would have mentioned it.
If it can be proven that the texts were deleted on purpose it's evidence of a conspiracy within the FBI to protect Stzork and Page. It's pretty clear from their original texts released that they were against Trump and mentioned having an "insurance policy" against him. Obviously, the FBI is supposed to be politically neutral and having these high ranked agents so openly plotting against a presidential candidate is unacceptable.
Critically the time period where these texts covered were not during the election, but during the transition and Trump's 1st few months in office. Those texts covered the time during the early days of the Mueller probe and could show obvious bias that could completely undermine the legitimacy of the probe. I don't think the Mueller probe has much credibility in the first place but it could make it so that even the most committed Democrat would have to reconsider it.
Remember, we aren't just talking about anti-Trump bias here. The main theory is that the Clinton campaign used FISA to spy on Donald Trump without a warrant. NSA Director found out what they were doing and put a stop to it but then they transferred their information to Fusion GPS and that info was used to create the Steele Dossier, which was used in turn to get a FISA warrant, to spy on Donald Trump. Stzork and Page were knee deep in that conspiracy and this loss of data may never be recovered and we might never know what they did during the transition period. We might not know how criminal their actions were. And we might not know how far the conspiracy goes. My pet theory is that Donald Trump wasn't the only one that was spied on, with both GOP and non-Clinton Democrats under surveillance.
This is why it is so important that everything is released as soon as possible. The FISA memo that detailed abuses of the FISA system is still held up in congress. The information in that memo, had it been released already, might have prevented this data from being deleted. As it stands right now, not releasing the memo is allowing people to create counter-narratives and hide crucial evidence. If what is known isn't released soon we may lose critical information.
I also have to say that I am having flashbacks to Watergate. In that case the actual crime, breaking into the DNC headquarters, was serious enough. But the coverup was the real crime and what exposed the same conspiracy. I am guessing that this deletion of texts may be the same thing for the FISA scandal.
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