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Donald Trump points finger at Samsung for lost FBI messages

Around 50,000 texts between FBI agents from December 2016 to May 2017 are apparently unrecoverable, and Trump tweets that Samsung may be to blame.

Daniel Van Boom Senior Writer
Daniel Van Boom is an award-winning Senior Writer based in Sydney, Australia. Daniel Van Boom covers cryptocurrency, NFTs, culture and global issues. When not writing, Daniel Van Boom practices Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu, reads as much as he can, and speaks about himself in the third person.
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Thousands of text messages between FBI agents apparently have gone missing, and US President Donald Trump is suggesting that Samsung may have played a role.

"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," Trump tweeted early Tuesday. The president was referencing texts exchanged between Peter Strzok, formerly a lead agent on the special counsel's investigation into alleged collusion between the Trump campaign and Russia, and Lisa Page, an attorney formerly on the same team. 

"Where are the 50,000 important text messages between FBI lovers Lisa Page and Peter Strzok? Blaming Samsung!," Trump tweeted late Tuesday. 

Strzok, who in a 2015 text message to Page called then-candidate Trump an "idiot," was reassigned last summer for fear of bias from special counsel Robert Mueller's investigation into potential Trump-Russia ties. Trump has denied any collusion between his campaign and Russia. Strzok's text messages to Page also criticized then-Attorney General Eric Holder and Sen. Bernie Sanders. Page has also been moved out of the investigative team and back into regular FBI duties, 

Watch this: Trump's tweets: A year in review

A software glitch on Samsung-branded, FBI-provided phones is reported to have permanently deleted five months' worth of FBI messages, from Dec. 14, 2016, to May 7, 2017. Trump's tweet read as though Strzok and Page's exchanges numbered around 50,000, but that's thought to be the number of all FBI messages lost.

Samsung  and White House representatives didn't immediately respond to requests for comment.

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