Republicans fume over missing FBI text messages

WASHINGTON—Republican congressional leaders expressed anger Monday night after learning five months of text messages sent by former FBI officials accused of favoring Hillary Clinton disappeared. Former counterintelligence agent Peter Strzok and FBI attorney Lisa Page sent the messages while they worked on special counsel Robert Mueller’s Russia probe. The agency flagged the missives for showing anti-Trump bias in private correspondence. The Justice Department sent a new round of text messages to congressional committees over the weekend, but three chairmen noted correspondence from a five-month span remains missing. House Judiciary Committee Chairman Bob Goodlatte (R-Va.), House Oversight Committee Chairman Trey Gowdy (R-S.C.), and House Intelligence Committee Chairman Devin Nunes (R-Calif.) wrote a joint statement demanding the Justice Department recover the missing messages. President Donald Trump weighed in with a tweet Tuesday morning: “In one of the biggest stories in a long time, the FBI now says it is missing five months’ worth of lovers Strzok-Page texts, perhaps 50,000, and all in prime time. Wow!” Attorney General Jeff Sessions pledged to get to the bottom of the mix-up: “We will leave no stone unturned to confirm with certainty why these text messages are not now available to be produced and will use every technology available to determine whether the missing messages are recoverable from another source. If any wrongdoing were to be found to have caused this gap, appropriate legal disciplinary action measures will be taken.”