In shift, DOJ now says early release of FBI agents' private texts to reporters was 'not authorized'

REUTERS/Joshua Roberts

Deputy U.S. Attorney General Rod Rosenstein testifies to the House Judiciary Committee hearing on oversight of the Justice Department on Capitol Hill in Washington, U.S., December 13, 2017.

• The US Justice Department said copies of private text messages exchanged between two former special counsel investigators were disclosed to some members of the media before they were given to Congress.
• According to a DOJ statement, those text messages "were not authorized" for release.
• The private text messages between Peter Strzok and Lisa Page were exchanged between 2015 and 2016.
• Many of those messages expressed disdain for then-candidate Donald Trump and revealed criticism of some top Democrats also.

The Justice Department acknowledged in a statement on Thursday night that copies of private text messages exchanged between two former special counsel investigators were disclosed to certain members of the media before they were given to Congress, even though those disclosures "were not authorized."

DOJ spokeswoman Sarah Isgur Flores told Politico that the text messages exchanged between Peter Strzok and Lisa Page were given to key members of the House Judiciary Committee the night before Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein's public testimony on Wednesday.

The DOJ's Public Affairs division shared the same messages with a group of reporters after they were shared with the lawmakers, Flores said. But some members of the media "had already received copies."

"As we understand now, some members of the media had already received copies of the texts before that - but those disclosures were not authorized by the department," she said.

Business Insider first reported the Justice Department's unusual invitation to a small group of reporters to travel to the DOJ on Tuesday night and view the private text messages Strzok and Page exchanged between 2015 and 2016.

The texts, many of which expressed disdain for then-candidate Donald Trump, were obtained in July as part of an ongoing investigation by the DOJ's inspector general into how the FBI handled the probe into Hillary Clinton's use of a private email server while she was secretary of state.

Strzok, a veteran counterintelligence agent, was among those overseeing the Clinton investigation. He was abruptly removed from Mueller's team in late July and relegated to the human-resources department after the FBI became aware of the texts. Page left over the summer for unrelated reasons.

A DOJ official said in a statement to Business Insider on Wednesday that the department "often" provides reporters with "information we give to Congressional committees to avoid any confusion."

It is true that the DOJ will sometimes give documents to reporters that it is already going to hand over to Congress. But it is not clear that the DOJ has ever released private text messages to the press that are the subject of an ongoing OIG investigation. At least some of those disclosures now appear to have been unauthorized.

Democratic members of the House Judiciary Committee, including its ranking member, sent a letter to Flores on Thursday asking her to explain who approved the invitation to reporters and whether she consulted with the OIG beforehand. The Democrats sent the inspector general, Michael Horowitz, a letter with similar questions.

The DOJ did not immediately return a request for comment from Business Insider. But Flores told Politico that Rosenstein had consulted with the inspector general, who "determined that he had no objection to the department's providing the material to the Congressional committees that had requested it."

The statement did not appear to address questions about whether the OIG approved the release of the texts to the media.

It said that senior career ethics advisers "determined that there were no legal or ethical concerns, including under the Privacy Act, that prohibited the release of the information to the public either by members of Congress or by the department."

Rosenstein demurred when asked by Rep. Hakeem Jeffries during the House Judiciary Committee hearing on Wednesday who authorized the invitation. But he said there had been a decision that the texts turned over to Congress were fit for public consumption.