Honorable Charles E. Grassley Chairman Committ

ee

on

the Judiciary United States Senate Washington, DC 20510 Dear Mr. Chairman:

U.S.

epartme

of

Justice

Federal

Bureau

I

nvestiga

ti

on

Washington D.C. 205 5-0001

May 2, 20

18

I am responding to yo

ur

January 25, 2018 letter and several equests therein. With respect to your questions regarding the

FBI s

consider

ti

on

of

the appointme

nt

of

a special counsel for the inves

ti

gation related to former Secretary C

li

ton

 s

private ema

il

ser

ve

r, and the recusal

of

former Deputy Director Andr

ew

McCabe,

th

e FB expects that the forthcoming report by the Department

of

Justi

ce s

Office

of

the Ins ect

or

General (OIG)

wi

ll

address these issues. Given that individuals previously employed b the FBI -including form

er

Director Co

rn

ey, former Deputy Director Mc

Ca

be, and former Assi tant Director

of

the Office

of

Integrity and Compliance Patri

ck

Kelly -are the persons most kno ledgeable about these issues, the FBI defers to those individuals and the OI

G s

forthcoming re

po

In response to your requests related to text messages betwee Ms. Page and Mr. Strzok, as we

ll

as commu

ni

cations that may have occurred via their

per

son I email accounts, the FBI provides the foll

ow

ing information. Any

commu

ni

cations describe in your questions 6 and 7,

if

collected and retained, have been

or

will be produced as part

oft

ongoing production

of

documents

in

response to your

pr

evious request. Additionally, as e plained in the OIG s January 25, 20

18

, le

tt

er,

th

e OIG has a

pp

arently succeeded in using forensic tools to recover some number

of

text messages from FBI devices, including text me sages between Mr. Strzok a

nd

M

s

Page sent and/or received between December

14

, 2016 and May

17

, 20

17

. Please note that FBI employees are required to adhere to record keeping policie in place where communications constitute records under the Federal Records Act (

RA

), irrespective

of

transmissi

on

medium; however, the FBI is not otherwise obligated t collect and/or retain a

ll

communications between its employees. Thus, the FBI has not req ested from M

s

Page or Mr. Strzok any in

fo

rmation from their personal email accounts, nor as the FBI conducted searches

of

non-FBI-issued communica

ti

ons devices or non-FBI e

ii

accounts associated with Mr. Strzok or Ms. Page.