FBI to Congress: Oh, sorry, we 'failed to retain' five months of our anti-Trump agents' text messages

If you've been following the Robert Mueller investigation in alleged Trump-Russia collusion, you're no doubt familiar with Peter Strzok And Lisa Page. They're the two anti-Republican, pro-Democrat, and fiercely anti-Trump FBI investigators who were working with Mueller's team. They were also instrumental in the FBI's go-nowhere investigation into Hillary Clinton's server. Their back-and-forth communications brought to light the supposed existence of an "insurance policy" in case Trump managed to with the 2016 presidential election. Precisely what that policy is remains a mystery. Though many speculate that the Mueller investigation is at least part of it, we simply don't know. What we do know is that Mueller put two of the most venomous, vehemently anti-Trump, people he could find on his allegedly unbiased team.

Since a segment of their messages exposed the insurance policy and their bias, people wondered what else would be found if we sifted through all their discussions. Sadly, it looks like we'll never know. According to the FBI, an uncomfortably common "glitch" has resulted in a "failure to preserve" five months of their text messages. Everything from December 2016 to May 2017 has been "lost." From the DailyCaller:

The FBI “failed to preserve” five months worth of text messages exchanged between Peter Strzok and Lisa Page, the two FBI employees who made pro-Clinton and anti-Trump comments while working on the Clinton email and the Russia collusion investigations. The disclosure was made Friday in a letter sent by the Justice Department to the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee (HSGAC). “The Department wants to bring to your attention that the FBI’s technical system for retaining text messages sent and received on FBI mobile devices failed to preserve text messages for Mr. Strzok and Ms. Page,” Stephen Boyd, the assistant attorney general for legislative affairs at the Justice Department, wrote to Wisconsin Sen. Ron Johnson, the chairman of HSGAC.

Color me shocked.

Just like Hillary's emails, and Lois Lerner's IRS tapes, we have yet another case of the feds saying "whoops, we lost that. sorry." Here's the sad thing. There are good people at the FBI. Thousands of them. For their sakes, I'd love to dismiss the idea that this was done purposely as a conspiracy theory. Unfortunately, it's getting harder and harder to defend any part of the DOJ. How many times have we seen something like this play out in the last few years? How many times have I written a variation on this same story? At this point, after so much obfuscation and so many "mysterious" losses, is anyone really buying the notion that this was a mistake? It's getting damn near impossible to give any of these people the benefit of the doubt. That's a depressing reality for honest agents, and frightening precedent for the future of our nation.

Robert Laurie——Bio and Archives

Robert Laurie’s column is distributed by HermanCain.com, which can be found at HermanCain.com

Be sure to “like” Robert Laurie over on Facebook and follow him on Twitter. You’ll be glad you did.