But the department also said in a letter to lawmakers that its record of messages sent to and from the agent, Peter Strzok, was incomplete because the FBI, for technical reasons, had been unable to preserve and retrieve about five months' worth of communications.
| I was under the impression that the phone company keeps all texts, just as email companies keep all emails in their various archives... |
New text messages highlighted in a letter to FBI Director Christopher Wray by Sen. Ron Johnson, the Republican chairman of the Senate's Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee, are from the spring and summer of 2016 and involve discussion of the investigation into Hillary Clinton's use of a private email server. They reference Attorney General Loretta Lynch's decision to accept the FBI's conclusion in that case and a draft statement that former FBI Director James Comey had prepared in anticipation of closing out the Clinton investigation without criminal charges.
The FBI declined to comment Sunday. CBS News Justice Reporter Paula Reid reported Sunday that the Strzok texts have been delivered and are expected to be made public via Congress.
In addition to the communications already made public, the Justice Department on Friday provided Johnson's committee with 384 pages of text messages, approximately 9,000 texts, exchanged between FBI employees Lisa Page and Strzok.