Rep. Ron DeSantis lobbed an accusation at the Department of Justice over a text between anti-Trump FBI agents that was revealed in the Inspector General's report released Thursday.
Here's what he said
DeSantis reproduced the controversial text between FBI agent Peter Strzok and his paramour Lisa Page, who was an FBI lawyer at the time.
While other texts between the two had been produced to Congress from the Department of Justice, the new text has been seized upon by many as more evidence of anti-Trump bias at the FBI.
"The following is in the IG report," DeSantis tweeted. "Why didn’t Rosenstein disclose this to Congress when we asked for the texts?"
"August 8 2016 Strzok-Page texts," he added, then posted their exchange.
"Page: [Trump’s] not ever going to become President, right? Right?!" said one text according to the report.
"Strzok: No. No he’s not. We’ll stop it," was the response from the FBI agent.
"The Strzok text about the FBI 'stopping' Trump from winning the election was never given to Congress even though the other texts from that day were provided," DeSantis explained.
"Did someone in the bureaucracy deliberately withhold?" he asked.
DeSantis isn't the only one asking. Rep. Mark Meadows (R-N.C.) released a statement blasting State Department for not previously releasing the text to Congress.
"Why did [Deputy Attorney General Rod] Rosenstein and the Justice Department hide this text message from investigators?" he asked. "There is absolutely no excuse. The fact that we are finding out about this text in an OIG report once again affirms that Mr. Rosenstein has zero interest in anything even approaching transparency."
Former Fox News anchor Bill O'Reilly called the text the one "smoking gun" in the report.
"Michael Horowitz put out 500 pages," he tweeted. "499 pages are open to interpretation."
"1 page is a smoking gun," he added. "That is the text message between Peter Strzok and Lisa Page."
What did the IG report conclude?
Although the report included new instances of bias by some members of the FBI, Inspector General Horowitz concluded that these did not add up to evidence of bias in the investigations conducted by the bureau.
"Our review did not find documentary or testimonial evidence directly connecting the political views these employees expressed in their text messages and instant messages to the specific investigation decisions we reviewed," the report said.
