The full wording of a text message that prompted concerns by Republican lawmakers that there was a ‘secret society’ among FBI employees has been revealed.
‘Are you even going to give out your calendars? Seems kind of depressing. Maybe it should just be the first meeting of the secret society,’ FBI lawyer Lisa Page wrote to agent Peter Strzok and first reported by ABC News.
Strzok’s name first appeared in the headlines when it was reported that he had been removed from Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s team and moved to the FBI’s human resources department over politically-biased texts with Page, his mistress at the time.
The message the FBI’s Peter Strzok received from his mistress Lisa Page referencing ‘secret societies’ stoked fears that such things actually existed within the bureau
FBI attorney Lisa Page sent a text message to Peter Strzok referencing ‘secret societies,’ which led to Sen. Ron Johnson suggesting there was ‘corruption of the highest levels of the FBI
Page had also worked for Mueller, but returned to the FBI after she completed her detail and before the couple’s conversations were discovered.
The ‘secret society’ text prompted Senate Homeland Security Committee Chairman Ron Johnson, a Wisconsin Republican, to air his concerns on Fox News Wednesday saying he believed the messages indicated ‘corruption of the highest levels of the FBI.’
Johnson said that he had heard from a source about ‘off-site’ FBI meet-ups, a revelation that concerned him.
Thursday, however, Johnson was changing his tune telling CNN that there was a ‘real possibility’ the message – which was a stand-alone message and thus lacked context – could have been sent in jest.
The president and Republicans have used the discovery of the texts between Strzok and Page to further tarnish the reputation of the FBI.
President Trump continued to beat that drum Wednesday, when he made great hey over the fact that some of the messages between the two lovers had gone missing.
‘That’s a lot of missing texts … that’s primetime,’ the president told a gaggle of reporters gathered in his chief of staff’s office.
However, on Thursday, the Justice Department’s Inspector General informed lawmakers that a trove of texts messages between Strzok and Page were recovered, CNN reported.
‘The OIG has been investigating this matter and, this week, succeeded in using forensic tools to recover text message from FBI devices, including text messages between Mr. Strzok and Ms. Page that were sent or received between December 14, 2016, and May 17, 2017,’ Justice Department Inspector General Michael Horowitz wrote in a letter.
Horowitz’s correspondence was given to CNN by the office of chairman of the Senate Homeland Security Committee, which is Johnson.