So we are punishing our military for killing terrorist.
After eight years, two investigations and the intervention of a congressman, Maj. Matthew Golsteyn is being charged with murder in the death of an Afghan man during a 2010 deployment.
Golsteyn’s commander “has determined that sufficient evidence exists to warrant the preferral of charges against him,” U.S. Army Special Operations Command spokesman Lt. Col. Loren Bymer told Army Times in a brief email statement Thursday.
“Major Golsteyn is being charged with the murder of an Afghan male during his 2010 deployment to Afghanistan,” Bymer wrote.
The major’s attorney, Phillip Stackhouse, told Army Times that he and his client learned of the charges on Thursday as well, and that the murder charge carries with it the possibility of a death penalty.
Stackhouse called his client a “humble servant-leader who saved countless lives, both American and Afghan, and has been recognized repeatedly for his valorous actions.”
Bymer confirmed that Golsteyn has been recalled to active duty and is under the command of the USASOC headquarters company. An intermediary commander will review the warrant of preferred charges to determine if the major will face an Article 32 hearing that could lead to a court-martial.
That commander has 120 days to make that decision.
Golsteyn had been placed on voluntary excess leave, an administrative status for soldiers pending lengthy administrative proceedings, Bymer said. He is not being confined at this time.
The path to these charges has been a winding one.
Golsteyn, a captain at the time, was deployed to Afghanistan in 2010 with 3rd Special Forces Group. During the intense Battle of Marja, explosives planted on a booby-trapped door killed two Marines and wounded three others who were working with the major’s unit.
During those heated days, Golsteyn earned a Silver Star, the nation’s third-highest award for valor, when he helped track down a sniper targeting his troops, assisted a wounded Afghan soldier and helped coordinate multiple airstrikes.
He would be awarded that medal at a 2011 ceremony at Fort Bragg, North Carolina. The award was later approved for an upgrade to the Distinguished Service Cross, the second highest award for valor.
But both the medal and his coveted Special Forces tab would be stripped from him due to an investigation that eventually closed in 2014 without any charges.
An Army board of inquiry recommended a general discharge for Golsteyn and found no clear evidence the soldier violated the rules of engagement while deployed in 2010. This would have allowed Golsteyn to retain most of his retirement benefits under a recommended general discharge under honorable conditions.
Though he was cleared of a law of armed conflict violation, the board found Golsteyn’s conduct as unbecoming an officer.
Golsteyn was out of Special Forces and in a legal limbo as he awaited a discharge.
That could have been the end of it, but in mid-2015, Army documents surfaced, showing that Golsteyn allegedly told CIA interviewers during a polygraph test that he had killed an alleged Afghan bomb-maker and later conspired with others to destroy the body.
Those documents were part of a 2011 report filed by an Army investigator, Special Agent Zachary Jackson, who reported that Golsteyn said after the Marines were killed in the February blast that his unit found bomb-making materials nearby, detained the suspected bomb-maker and brought him back to their base.
A local tribal leader identified the man as a known Taliban bomb-maker. The accused learned of the leader’s identification, which caused the tribal leader to fear he would kill him and his family if released.
Trusting the leader and having also seen other detainees released, Golsteyn allegedly told CIA interviewers that he and another soldier took the alleged bomb-maker off base, shot him and buried his remains.
He also allegedly told the interviewers that on the night of the killing, he and two other soldiers dug up the body and burned it in a trash pit on base.
Stackhouse has previously called this alleged admission a “fantasy” that his client confessed to shooting an unarmed man.
Then, in late 2016, during an interview with Fox News, Golsteyn admitted to a version of the incidents involving the killing of the alleged Afghan bomb-maker.
The Army opened a second investigation near the end of 2016.
Rep. Duncan Hunter, R-California, himself a Marine veteran of both Iraq and Afghanistan, stepped in on Golsteyn’s behalf, writing a letter to the Army secretary and making scathing public comments about the case, calling the Army’s investigation “retaliatory and vindictive.”
The congressman called on Army leadership to “fix this stupidity,” describing Golsteyn as “a distinguished and well regarded Green Beret.”
Unrelated to the Golsteyn case, Hunter was indicted earlier this year by federal prosecutors who are alleging conspiracy, wire fraud, falsification of records and prohibited use of campaign contributions.
An 11-year-old boy known as “Desmond Is Amazing” danced on stage at a New York gay bar while grown men tossed dollar bills at him.
“The pre-adolescent boy, dressed in drag to imitate singer Gwen Stefani, pranced around the stage at Brooklyn’s 3 Dollar Bill, an LGBT bar described as ‘queer owned & operated,’ and ‘Brooklyn’s Premiere Queer Bar & Performance Venue,’” LifeSiteNews reports.
For reasons that suddenly make sense, the bar enforces a strict ban on cell phone usage.
One Yelp reviewer wrote that the bar makes you “put your phone into a locked magnet pouch at the door, so it can’t be used while there. You can slip it into your pocket but can’t get in the pouch.”
Below Good Morning America Praising Him
Another explained it this way: “The club put our phones in these locked sleeves, which we could [carry] around the club.”
The first to report this about the sexual exploitation of this child was a YouTuber named Yosef Ozia, who connected all these dots based on the Yelp reviews:
As you can see in the video, this 11-year-old boy is dressed in drag and prancing around wearing a tank top as grown men cheer and throw money.
In even creepier news, “Desmond Is Amazing” has been celebrated by the establishment media.
The Daily Beast and NBC News have both gushed over what can only be described as the sexual exploitation of a child.
According to LifeSite, “ABC’s ‘Good Morning America’ (GMA) recently devoted a segment to the boy during which his cross-dressing was celebrated as an example of individuality, and his parents were praised for their support of his drag hobby.”
The Daily Wire reports that this exploitation has been going on for years: “When Desmond was just six years old, he was featured in a music video with drag queen and Season Six winner of RuPaul’s Drag Race Jinkx Monsoon. As a fourth-grader, the child was used to advance the LGBT agenda, giving a speech at New York City’s Pride in 2017.”
According to Desmond’s biography, he came out as a homosexual — when he was born:
Desmond was born in June 2007, during NYC Pride Week, at St. Vincent’s Hospital in Manhattan. As he tells it, this means that he “is a member of the Village People by default”. He has also claimed that he “came out of the closet when he was born”. Desmond has a loving family and lives in New York City with his father, mother, and many pets. He also has an older sister. Desmond’s nickname at home is Desi.
In this same write up, though, Desmond’s parents claim they are just letting him do what he wants — that a therapist told them this is healthy. In other words, if he enjoys dressing like a girl, being an LGBT icon, and performing in drag, let him.
But it also says this [emphasis added]:
Although he wants everyone to express themselves as genuinely as possible, he is concerned about the growing trend of young teen and child drag performers to dress or act overly sexy or provocatively, much like their adult counterparts. He feels that it sends the wrong message about all young drag performers and results in added aggression, bullying, and hatred, not only from society, but from within the LGBTQ community itself. Although an often controversial topic, he would personally like to see more young people discovering a drag style that speaks to their personal truth, but is at the same time, more age appropriate.
So, in public, Desmond is presented as a child just doing what he loves but in a healthy way that is not “overly sexual” or “provocative,” in a manner that is “age appropriate.”
But at gay bars where your phone’s recording devices are disabled upon entry, 11-year-old Desmond’s parents have him dancing around on stage in a tank top while grown men hoot, holler, and throw money.
According to my watch, the Second Coming is already ten minutes late.
When will these people get serious about the government corruption.
Democrats who are hoping that President Donald Trump will face harsh repercussions for paying settlements to women who allege relationships with him passed legislation on Thursday that requires them to make payments for sexual harassment with their own money.
Current law addressing sexual misconduct that was put in place in 1995 — ironically when Bill Clinton was in the White House — requires an accuser to get counseling, wait 30 days, and allowed accused lawmakers to use a slush fund of taxpayer money to pay off their accusers.
Part of the reason it took Congress all year to get this done is because the House wanted tougher punishments and more transparency when lawmakers sexually harass or discriminate against staff, while Senate Republicans, for some reason, insisted on watering down those provisions.
House lawmakers, for example, wanted to make members of Congress pay out of pocket for discrimination settlements too and wanted to provide legal representation to all accusers. But the Senate, which finally caved on requiring lawmakers to pay out of pocket for sexual harassment settlements, rejected both of those provisions and neither ended up in the final bill.
The passage of the bill, which President Donald Trump has to sign into law, is Congress’s response to the #MeToo movement launched last year, wherein women across the country accused men ranging from Hollywood moguls to media celebrities and members of the House and Senate of sexual harassment and worse.
Rep. Jackie Speier (D-CA) spearheaded the movement in Congress last year after announcing that she, too, had been the victim of sexual misconduct as a young congressional staffer. She was one of the main sponsors behind the House legislation, and she promised to push next session to put that chamber’s tougher terms back in place.
“Taxpayers should never foot the bill for Members’ misconduct,” Speier said in a statement provided to the Huffington Post. “And having spoken with many survivors, the process of going up against a lawyer for the institution and the harasser was as traumatic, if not more traumatic, than the abuse they suffered. … We are committed to offering victims the tools they need to pursue justice. We will address these issues in the next Congress.”
The law is not retroactive, so the members who have left their Congressional seats because of sexual misconduct charges will not be affected, including Blake Farenhold (R-TX), Patrick Meehan (R-PA), Trent Franks (R-AZ), John Conyers (D-MI), and Al Franken (D-MN).
The Daily Caller asked Speier why lawmakers paying off women who make accusations against them differs from what Trump is alleged to have done when his lawyer paid funds to women who claimed to have had a relationship with him.
“They’re totally unrelated,” Speier told The Daily Caller on Wednesday. She later explained, “One was to impact an election and the other was bad behavior within Congress.”
“When pressed further about the Congressional settlements being taxpayer money, as opposed to any money allegedly paid to Stormy Daniels through Michael Cohen, Speier responded, “I’m the one who has carried the legislation to make sure that members are held accountable. These members are now gone. There’s no one left who was sexually harassing.”
This is how many on the left want most Universities to look
• Qatar gave $1 billion to elite American universities since 2011, according to Department of Education data.
• The Qatar Foundation is suing the Texas attorney general to prevent information about Qatari funding from becoming public.
• Universities are taking money from Qatar, a nation with a checkered human rights history, as students rally for social justice causes.
The nation of Qatar, a Sharia-law monarchy that has been accused of trying to influence other countries’ governments, gave $1 billion to elite American universities since 2011, according to Department of Education data.
Some universities have refused to discuss where strings are attached to that money. The Qatar Foundation, for example, filed a lawsuit against the Texas attorney general Oct. 12 to hide information about the $225 million Qatar has awarded to Texas A&M University since 2011.
The Qatar Foundation hired the politically connected powerhouse law firm Squire Patton Boggs for the suit, which was filed in response to a researcher’s public information request regarding the foreign funding.
The biggest recipient of Qatar’s educational funding, Georgetown University, repeatedly ignored requests from The Daily Caller News Foundation for basic information about the funding and whether it implicates academic independence.
Egypt, the United Arab Emirates and Bahrain have accused Qatar of meddling in other nations’ internal affairs as well as funding terrorism. Qatar also wields influence through its media group, Al Jazeera.
Top Foreign Funders of U.S. Universities, 2011-2016 (Source: Department of Education)
Country
Amount
Qatar
$1,024,065,043
England
$761,586,394
Saudi Arabia
$613,608,797
China
$426,526,085
Canada
$402,535,603
Hong Kong
$394,446,859
For a nation seeking sway over the U.S., Georgetown University would be a particularly tactical site of influence. Georgetown has received nearly $333 million from Qatar since 2011 — far more than any other U.S. school has received from any foreign nation.
Georgetown is situated in the seat of power, near the State Department, and its experts are frequently cited by groups shaping policy. In fact, the Jesuit Catholic university trains many of the United States’ future diplomats at its Walsh School of Foreign Service.
Its website notes that “At SFS, you can study with former Secretaries of State” and access “connections to diplomats from just about every country, and of course, the seat of the U.S. government. Our location gives SFS the extraordinary opportunity for us to engage (and sometimes even influence) the debates that lead to real action.”
Thanks to the Qatari funding, Georgetown and its foreign service program has an entire outpost in Qatar. “Georgetown University in Qatar (GU-Q) is an additional location of Georgetown University, based in Education City in Doha,” its website says. “The University offers a four year undergraduate program in international affairs leading to the Bachelor of Science in Foreign Service (BSFS) degree.”
Students from VCU’s home campus visit the Imam Muhammad ibn Abd al-Wahhab Mosque, the national mosque of Qatar. Source: VCU
The magnitude of liberal-leaning universities’ reliance on the foreign nation, a poster child for income inequality, provides a stark contrast. As U.S. college students clamor for university endowments to divest from fossil fuels, the schools take money from the oil-rich kingdom. As they rally for social justice causes, Qatar has a checkered human rights record.
Qatar has only 313,000 citizens, and 2.3 million foreigners dwelling there, many of them laborers serving the country’s elite, according to 2017 data.
“The tragedy of 1.7 million migrant workers trapped in Qatar defines modern day slavery,” the International Trade Union Confederation said in 2015.
Nepalese laborers died at a rate of almost one a day in Qatar, according to The Guardian.
“We were working on an empty stomach for 24 hours; 12 hours’ work and then no food all night,” one said. “When I complained, my manager assaulted me, kicked me out of the labor camp I lived in and refused to pay me anything.”
In Washington, professors of Islamic issues have engaged in activism. Jonathan A. C. Brown, a convert to Islam and the director of the Alwaleed bin Talal Center for Muslim-Christian Understanding at Georgetown, which Qatar rival Saudi Arabia funds, offered an Islam-based defense of slavery, concubinage and non-consensual sex.
“The Prophet of God had slaves. He had slaves. There’s no denying that,” he said in 2017 at an International Institute of Islamic Thought talk. “Was he — are you more morally mature than the Prophet of God? No, you’re not. I’ll answer your question for you.” (RELATED: Before Killing Of Journalist, Elite Universities Took $600M From Saudis)
Studying abroad forms a bond between U.S. students and Qatar and helps Qatari nationals learn about the U.S., according to marketing materials.
Top Recipients of Qatar-Affiliated Funding to Universities, 2011-2016 (Source: Department of Education)
Country
Amount
Georgetown University
$332,818,297
Northwestern University
$277,456,289
Texas A&M University
$225,455,141
Carnegie Mellon University
$71,456,401
Cornell University
$47,577,242
Virginia Commonwealth University
$40,117,185
University of Michigan – Ann Arbor
$7,860,694
Harvard University
$7,693,947
Purdue University
$2,794,462
Arizona State University
$2,276,044
University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
$1,223,630
Meanwhile, college students have adopted a fondness for the Boycott, Divest and Sanctions to Israel movement.
The vast majority of funds from Qatar were contracts, the Education Department data shows, requiring Georgetown to do something in return for the money, unlike gifts.
Georgetown spokesman Matt Hill ignored questions from TheDCNF about the strings attached to such funds and whether they could influence curriculum and would not provide the contract governing them.
The dean of Georgetown’s Qatar campus is Ahmad Dallal, who the Middle East Forum describes as “a long-time and enthusiastic supporter of the State Department-designated terrorist group Hezbollah. Dallal, who chaired Georgetown’s Department of Arabic and Islamic Studies from 2003 to 2009, is also pro-Hamas, pro-Boycott/Divestment/Sanctions (BDS) against Israel, co-author of an Arabic textbook whose maps omit Israel, and signatory of a letter warning that Israel would engage in ‘ethnic cleansing’ at the start of the Iraq war.”
The Zachor Legal Institute, which opposes the movement to sanction and boycott Israel, submitted a Freedom of Information request in May to Texas A&M (TAMU), a state university, for “a summary of all amounts of funding or donations received” from Qatar and a long list of proxies.
The office of state Attorney General Ken Paxton ruled “the university must withhold the donors’ identifying information … the university must release the remaining information.”
Most of the money to TAMU were contracts, not donations.
The Qatar Foundation’s high-powered lawyers intervened, arguing the relevant portion of the attorney general’s ruling “requiring release of all remaining information other than donor identity is incorrect and without force or effect.”
They wrote:
This is an action to prevent disclosure of confidential financial information concerning the relationship between QF and Texas A&M University … QF operates programs dedicated to education, science, and community development. It is responsible for funding much of the development in Education City, a hub for higher education outside Doha. … In addition to TAMU, Carnegie Mellon, Cornell, Georgetown, Northwestern, and Virginia Commonwealth University have all established campuses in Education City.
The Attorney General concluded that TAMU could withhold information identifying ‘donors’ under section 552.1235. But the Attorney General stated that TAMU would be required to release all remaining information requested, which would include information related to payments made by QF to TAMU pursuant to a contract. In so doing, the Attorney General implicitly ruled that those payments were not ‘donations,’ and therefore not exempt from disclosure under the PIA … The information related to these grants and donations is also confidential commercial information and constitutes a trade secret.
The Qatar Foundation’s general counsel is Michael Mitchell, a former vice president of Ohio State University.
Marc Greendorfer, an attorney for the Zachor Legal Institute, responded to the Texas attorney general Nov. 8: “One of the Qatari entities that was the subject of our original request has taken the extraordinary step of taking the Texas Attorney General to court to suppress the information that we requested. Now, with the most recent attempt by TAMU to prevent public disclosure of information as to how Qatari entities are involved with a Texas public university, the intrigue grows, and we have to wonder what it is they are trying to keep from the public.”
TAMU and the Qatar Foundation did not return requests for comment.
The university operations by Qatar are just one prong in a massive public relations and influence push that includes millions to lobbyists and public relations firms in the U.S.
It is also not the only involvement of Squire Patton Boggs with Middle Eastern countries. The same law firm also has a $100,000-a-month contract with Qatar’s rival Saudi Arabia for the kingdom to retain former Senate Majority Leader Trent Lott and former Democratic Louisiana Sen. John Breaux.
According to Foreign Agent Registration Act disclosures, it worked directly with Saud al-Qahtani, the same aide who allegedly organized the killing of a
The Justice Department and FBI have missed a Wednesday deadline to provide information about the government’s mysterious raid on a former FBI contractor-turned-whistleblower’s home last month.
Sixteen FBI agents on Nov. 19 raided the home of Dennis Nathan Cain, who reportedly gave the Justice Department’s Inspector General (IG) documents related to the Uranium One controversy and potential wrongdoing by former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton.
The documents in question allegedly showed that federal officials failed to investigate possible criminal activity related to Clinton, the Clinton Foundation and Rosatom, a Russian nuclear company. Its subsidiary purchased Canadian mining company Uranium One in 2013.
Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Chuck Grassley, R-Iowa, whose panel has oversight of the Justice Department, penned a letter to FBI Director Christopher Wray and Justice Department IG General Michael Horowitz, requesting information on the justification for the raid. Grassley gave Wray and Horowitz until Dec. 12 to respond to his request.
That deadline has come and gone, and neither the FBI nor DOJ has produced any documents or response.
“We have not yet received answers to the chairman’s questions on this matter,” a Judiciary Commitee spokesperson told Fox News late Thursday.
The FBI consistently has refused Fox News’ request for comment on the whistleblower raid and the Judiciary Committee’s requests. On Thursday, an FBI spokesperson told Fox News the agency would respond only to inquiries from the entity that requested the documents — in this case, the Judiciary Committee.
Questioning whether “we now live in a secret police state,” Cain took his frustration about the situation to Twitter earlier this week.
“So I blow the whistle on the FBI, get raided by the same FBI, and now they want to keep the FBI’s reasons secret? Do we now live in a secret police state? Feels a little like 1984,” Cain tweeted late Monday. The tweet eventually was deleted.
The Daily Caller requested that a court unseal the relevant search warrant materials, but the U.S. Attorney for the District of Maryland, in a court filing, said: “the request should be denied.”
“Public disclosure of any search warrant materials would seriously jeopardize the integrity of the ongoing investigation,” the filing by the U.S. Attorney’s Office said. “Continued sealing is essential in order to guard against possible tampering of witnesses and destruction of evidence, to maintain the ability of the grand jury to investigate this matter, and to prevent the disclosure of sensitive investigative techniques and methods.”
A spokesperson for U.S. Attorney for the District of Maryland Robert K. Hur declined to comment.
Cain’s lawyer, Michael Socarras, told The Daily Caller the agent who led the raid accused his client of possessing stolen federal property. In response, Cain reportedly claimed he was a protected whistleblower under federal law, and said he was recognized as such by Horowitz.
Socarras also claimed Horowitz had transmitted information on the sale of Uranium One to a Russian firm’s subsidiary to both the House and Senate intelligence committees.
The bureau refuses to release 37 pages of new documents related to the controversial deal; reaction and analysis from Fox News contributor Jason Chaffetz, former Republican congressman from Utah.
A spokesperson for the inspector general declined to comment.
“As frustrating and violating as this feels to me and my family. I will continue to put my trust in God. Some day this life will pass away. I will stand before my maker with a clean concience[sic] and Jesus as my defender. Until then I continue to fight the good fight with God’s help,” Cain tweeted Monday night.
On Tuesday, he added: “Thank you for the outpouring of encouragement. You all are awesome. A boxer goes into his corner to rest for a minute, refocus, and get some sideline coaching. Then the bell rings and he’s ready to go another round. This fight is spiritual and God is in our corner. Ding! Rom 8:31.”
Thank you for the outpouring of encourment. You all are awesome. A boxer goes into his corner to rest for a minute, refocus, and get some sideline coaching. Then the bell rings and he’s ready to go another round. This fight is spiritual and God is in our corner. Ding! Rom 8:31
Fox News has previously reported that Douglas Campbell, an FBI informant involved in the Uranium One deal, has testified to lawmakers that Moscow paid millions to American lobbying firm APCO Worldwide to influence Clinton and the Obama administration.
“The contract called for four payments of $750,000 over 12 months,” Campbell said in his statement this past February. “APCO was expected to give assistance free of charge to the Clinton Global Initiative as part of their effort to create a favorable environment to ensure the Obama administration made affirmative decisions on everything from Uranium One to the US-Russia Civilian Nuclear Cooperation agreement.”
APCO has denied Campbell’s claims while Clinton called any claims of wrongdoing related to the Uranium One deal “the same baloney they’ve been peddling for years, and there’s been no credible evidence by anyone.
“In fact,” Clinton told C-SPAN in October 2017, “it’s been debunked repeatedly and will continue to be debunked.”
Separately, the DOJ and Special Counsel Robert Mueller face a Friday afternoon deadline to turn over documents related to their questioning of fired National Security Adviser Michael Flynn. Flynn’s team has alleged the FBI pressured him not to have a lawyer at the White House meeting in January 2017, after which Flynn was charged on one count of lying to federal authorities.
Flynn — who had to sell his house this year amid mounting legal bills — later pleaded guilty to lying to agents about a conversation he had with the Russian ambassador in December 2016 about sanctions that had recently been imposed by then-President Barack Obama. Flynn has since acknowledged seeking to convince Russia not to retaliate for those sanctions during the presidential transition period.
But Flynn’s lawyers, in an explosive Tuesday court filing that threatens to upend his pending sentencing, charged that the FBI had not finalized their pivotal, and only, account of Flynn’s statements until August 2017 — nearly eight months after their interview with him. Fired FBI Director James Comey has since admitted the Flynn meeting broke normal agency protocol.
The Office of the Special Counsel deleted text messages from the iPhone of fired FBI agent Peter Strzok before turning it over to the Department of Justice Office of the Inspector General (OIG), according to a report released by the federal watchdog.
On Thursday, the Justice Department’s inspector general released a report stating thousands of text messages exchanged between Strzok and FBI attorney Lisa Page could not be recovered after Mueller’s team wiped clean the phones it had issued them.
So Mueller’s team wiped ALL of the data off of Peter Strzok’s iPhone after determining “it contained no substantive text messages.” Given what we know about Strzok, this smells like quite the coverup. Time for Congress to step in?
“SCO’s Records Officer told the OIG that as part of the office’s records retention procedure, the officer reviewed Strzok’s DOJ issued iPhone after he returned it to the SCO and determined it contained no substantive text messages,” the watchdog report reads. As Conservative Review national security reporter Jordan Schachtel first discovered, the OIG said Strzok’s cell phone was “reset to factory settings,” deleting all data stored on the device.
The federal watchdog said in the report it found “no discernible patterns” about the content of thousands of messages the FBI was able to recover between Strzok and Page. Both have been part of Mueller’s investigation of possible collusion between the Trump campaign and Russia.
Strzok and Page testified before Congress this summer, and the former FBI agent admitted that he had not turned over all of his communications with Page to the Inspector General from his personal phone, even though their recovered conversations showed the two suggesting they move to apps like iMessage or Gmail. Strzok told outgoing Rep. Darrell Issa (R-CA) that it is a “safe assumption” that he sent messages to Page from his personal phone that were similar in nature to the widely-publicized messages attacking Trump supporters. He told House Judiciary Chairman Bob Goodlatte (R-VA) that he himself determined which messages on that phone were “relevant to FBI business” that the Inspector General could review.
At that time of their exchanges, the FBI was investigating whether former secretary of state and then-presidential candidate Hillary Clinton improperly used a private email account while she was Secretary of State. Strzok, a senior counterintelligence agent, was assigned to the case, as was Page. Reports claimed the two were romantically involved during this time. Strzok was ultimately fired after anti-Trump text messages between him and Page were discovered by the special counsel.
Thursday’s report said the FBI used special software to collect more than 20,000 text messages from the pair’s phones, but not all were sent between Strzok and Page. Investigators have already released some of the controversial texts, including a message from Strzok saying he would “stop” President Donald Trump from winning the election.
Missing text messages from the pair’s iPhones, though, continue to elude the FBI.
Early this year, the Office of the Inspector General contacted Verizon Wireless to determine if the carrier retains old text messages. Verizon said messages are retained for up to seven days after they are sent, and then erased. The missing messages in question were much older than a week by that time and Verizon no longer had them.
