US Lawmaker Calls to Recover Anti-Trump Messages by FBI Agents in Russia Probe

WASHINGTON (Sputnik) - US Congressman Lee Zeldin on Monday called on Congress to subpoena two Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) agents involved in the Trump-Russia investigation as well as forensically examine their cell phones after the FBI acknowledged it failed to collect five months of the agents’ anti-Trump text messages.

"Congress must do everything it can to recover these critical text messages, including subpoenaing Peter Strzok and Lisa Page’s cell carriers and requesting the FBI perform a full forensic exam of their employees’ phones in an attempt to recover the messages," Zeldin said in a press release on Monday.

On Sunday, the US Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee said the FBI recently admitted it had failed to preserve the text messages exchanged between FBI counterintelligence official Peter Strzok and his mistress and FBI lawyer Lisa Page.

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The text messages were sent between December 14, 2016 and May 17, 2017, a critical period in the FBI’s investigation of the Trump campaign’s alleged collusion with Russia, which Strzok was picked to oversee in July 2016.

During the five-month period, Strzok interviewed then National Security Adviser Michael Flynn about his contacts with Russia’s Ambassador Sergey Kislyak, the Trump dossier was published and James Comey was fired as FBI director.

On the last day of the five-month time period, Robert Mueller was appointed to serve as Special Counsel on the Russia investigation.

Strzok and Page were members of the Special Counsel’s Office, but Strzok was removed in July after the Justice Department discovered his anti-Trump exchanges with Page.