14 DAY TRIAL // Donald Trump’s latest tweetstorm includes some information about who might be at fault for thousands of text messages between FBI agents that were completely lost.
The United States President says there are some 50,000 such messages that can no longer be recovered and which were exchanged by former agent Peter Strzok and attorney Lisa Page. Both were working on the Special Council probe over Trump’s possible ties with Russia during the presidential campaign.
“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!” Trump tweeted on January 23.
“Where are the 50,000 important text messages between FBI lovers Lisa Page and Peter Strzok? Blaming Samsung!” he posted in a follow-up tweet a few hours later.
Samsung remains tight-lipped on the claims
While it’s not clear how Samsung was involved in the message blunder, the FBI is known to be using devices manufactured by the South Korean firm. According to reports, a software glitch is to blame, with messages from December 14, 2016 to May 7, 2017 completely removed from smartphones used by Strzok and Page.
Samsung has already refused to comment on Trump’s statement, but CBSNews has more information on what could have caused the loss of messages beyond recovery:
“Misconfiguration issues related to rollouts, provisioning, and software upgrades that conflicted with the FBI's collection capabilities.”
The lost conversation logs between Strzok and Page are believed to include derogatory comments about the US President, who the FBI agent himself referred to as an “idiot” in a text message sent to the attorney back in 2015.
In a letter to the Congress, the Justice Department invoked “technical reasons” for not being able to retrieve 5 months worth of text messages between the two, though no other specifics than the ones mentioned above are known at this point.
Where are the 50,000 important text messages between FBI lovers Lisa Page and Peter Strzok? Blaming Samsung! — Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) January 24, 2018