Ron Johnson (R-WI) chair of the Senate Homeland Security Committee is complaining about deleted texts between an FBI agent and a lawyer who worked on the Hillary Clinton email investigation. This is the same Ron Johnson who was on Tucker Carlson’s show last Thursday declaiming about “the politicizing of the FBI,” because he believes that James Comey’s statement on Hillary’s emails was “watered down,” and that the investigation was never really an investigation, it was done to “cover up the truth and exonerate Hillary Clinton.” RealClearPolitics:
"We have seen now with this Lois Lerner in the IRS politicizing the more fearsome government agency from the standpoint from most Americans, used it as a political weapon," the Senator said. "We've seen the politicization of the FBI. So we are losing confidence in these institutions that should be bedrocks of our democracy."
"I have no idea why the FBI doesn't just come clean and provide this information to Congress. What are they trying to hide? What are they trying to cover up?" Johnson asked.
That was Johnson on Thursday. On Saturday Johnson wrote a letter stating that the FBI’s technical system failed to preserve texts that were exchanged between Lisa Page, a lawyer, and Peter Strzok, an agent, between mid-December 2016 through mid-May of 2017. Strzok and Page are the pair who came to the attention of Republicans weeks ago for exchanging anti-Trump messages on their work-issued cell phones and of course Johnson is using them in his effort to discredit the FBI generally. Reuters:
Republicans have said the texts, which referred to Trump as an “idiot” and a “loathsome human,” raised concerns the FBI is biased against Trump and may have given Clinton favorable treatment after deciding not to recommend criminal charges in connection with the probe into her use of a private email system while she was secretary of state.
Strzok and Page were involved in that investigation and also were briefly assigned to work with Special Counsel Robert Mueller on the Russia investigation.
After Mueller learned about the texts, Strzok was re-assigned to a different post. Page’s 45-day detail on Mueller’s team ended in July.
In his letter, Johnson said he learned of the software problem from the FBI on Jan. 19, after it gave 384 texts to the committee, one of several in Congress that recently launched inquiries into how the FBI handled the Clinton investigation.
Johnson and the Republicans need to discredit the FBI because the road to Moscow is getting more problematic with each passing week. It is probably safe to assume that the FBI provided all texts that were within the parameters of what was requested, and then Johnson found out about some others and began to spin this tale. Making an issue out of texts on cell phones is grasping at straws but it’s probably an indication of things to come, considering the conflagration that resulted from some deleted emails.