US. Department of Justice Office of Legislative Affairs Of?ce of the Assistant Attorney General Washington, D. C. 205 30 The Honorable Devin Nunes Chairman JAN 19 an Permanent Selection Committee on Intelligence U.S. House of Representatives Washington, DC 20515 Dear Chairman Nunes: This responds to your request to the Department of Justice (Department) to provide the Committee with copies of text message communications between Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) employees Peter Strzok and Lisa Page. As you may know, on January 12, 2016, the Department?s Office of Inspector General (OIG) publicly announced that the OIG would review ?allegations that Department or FBI policies or procedures were not followed in connection with, or in actions leading up to or related to, the FBI Director?s public announcement on July 5, 2016,1 and the Director?s letters to Congress on October 28 and November 6, 2016, and that certain underlying investigative decisions were based on improper considerations?? As part of that review, the OIG obtained, aniong other things, text messages between Mr. Strzok and Ms. Page. In December 2017, we provided you with an initial production of approximately 375 text message communications, dated August 16, 2015 to December 1, 2016. In response to the requests for the texts messages, the Department collected all text messages between Mr. Strzok and Ms. Page available from the FBI for the period July 1, 2015 to July 28, 2017,3 which was the same period requested by the OIG. The Department began reviewing those documents in an effort to provide you those messages that were either work~related or that provided any insight into the political views of the participants. 1 On that date, then?FBI Director James B. Conley announced that the FBI was recommending to the Department of Justice that no charges should be ?led relating to former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton?s use of a private email server. 2 DOJ OIG Announces Initiation of Review, January 12, 2017, available at: 7/2017? 01.42pm" 3 Although the request included texts through July 28, 2017, there were no text messages between Mr. Strzok and Ms. Page after July 1, 2017, and the messages after June 25, 2017, were personal in nature. The Honorable Devin Nunes Page Two The Department is not providing text messages that were purely personal in nature. Furthermore, the Department has redacted from some work-related text messages portions that were purely personal. The Department?s aim in withholding purely personal text messages and redacting personal portions of work-related text messages was primarily to facilitate the Committee?s access to potentially relevant text messages without having to cull through large quantities of material unrelated to either the investigation of former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton?s use of a personal email server or the investigation into Russian efforts to interfere with the 2016 Presidential election. Also, the withholding of personal information in some instances avoids unnecessary embarrassment or harassment to third parties that could result from public release of such information. The Department redacted the names of employees who are not SES- level employees, and in some instances, redacted SES employees? names to avoid unwarranted attention to those individuals when comments were gratuitous and did not provide relevant information to ongoing Congressional inquiries. In a few instances, the Department has redacted portions of work-related texts that concern other investigations. Finally, the Department consulted with the Special Counsel?s Office (SCO) and made some redactions related to the structure, operation, and substance of the SCO investigation because it is ongoing. To avoid any concern that the Department has withheld relevant information, if a Committee has specific questions about why a particular text was partially redacted or about the nature of personal text messages withheld, the Department will work with that Committee to either further describe or disclose redacted information in a closed setting. Although the original spreadsheet contained only what the Department believed to be work-related text messages, subsequent reviews identified some additional personal text messages within that document. Therefore, the document produced today contains a small number of fully redacted messages that were determined to be personal messages subsequent to their initial inclusion in the previously provided spreadsheet. The enclosed document also excludes columns of information that contained only technical information such as phone numbers or email addresses in an effort to provide a more readily reviewable set of documents. In the attached, the ?Inbox? documents are from Mr. Strzok to Ms. Page, and the ?Outbox? documents are from Ms. Page to M. Strzok. The Department wants to bring to your attention that the Bl?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 ?'om December 14, 2016 to approximately to May 17, 2017. The FBI has informed us that many FBI-provided Samsung 5 mobile devices did not capture or store text messages due to misconfiguration issues related to rollouts, provisioning, and software upgrades that con?icted with the collection capabilities. The result was that data that should have been automatically collected and retained for long?term storage and retrieval was not collected. This problem should have been corrected with the rollout of the Samsung ?75 in 20 1 7. The Honorable Devin Nunes Page Three Mr. Strzok?s Samsung 5 phone last connected to the storage system on June 18, 2016. He received his new Samsung 7 phone on or about July 5, 2017. Ms. Page?s Samsung 5 phone last connected to the storage system on December 13, 2016. She received her new Samsung 7 phone on or about May 22, 2017.4 The Of?ce of Inspector General pieced together the text messages between Mr. Strzok and Ms. Page from June 18, 2016, to December 13, 2016, using the data from Ms. Page?s phone until the connection to the storage system stopped on December 13, 2016. On May 17, 2017, Ms. Page?s data collection re-initiated when she received her new phone. Please let this of?ce know if you have any questions regarding this production. ly yours, phen E. Boyd Assistant Attorney General cc: The Honorable Adam Schiff Ranking Member 4 Although FBI identi?ed May 22, 2017 as the issued date for Ms. Page?s phone, collection resumed on May 18, 2017. The FBI has not yet been able to account for this discrepancy.