The FBI's so-called "secret society" of anti-Trump individuals, which caused a stir when Sen. Ron Johnson, R-Wis., made mention of it earlier this year, was a joke, FBI agents told the Justice Department inspector general.

Investigators tracked down Peter Strzok and Lisa Page, FBI officials infamous for their anti-Trump text message exchanges, and asked them about a text that Page sent to Strzok one day after the 2016 election.

“Are you even going to give out your calendars? Seems kind of depressing. Maybe it should just be the first meeting of the secret society," she said on Nov. 9, according to the DOJ inspector general report released Thursday, which focused on the DOJ and FBI's investigation into former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton's emails.

Asked to explain, Page said "calendars" were in fact “funny and snarky” calendars of Russian President Vladimir Putin in different poses, such as “holding a kitten." She told investigators that Strzok had previously purchased these calendars as “dark gallows humor.”

Furthermore, Page said the “secret society” was meant to be a “dark sort of” humor about President Trump winning the election and concerns she and Strzok had about him.

"And so, we somewhat with dark humor, but also somewhat, you know, with real concern as, of course, our Director actually gets fired, talk about, like, well, when he shuts down the, when he finds out about the investigation and shuts down the FBI, you know, we’ll form a secret society so we can like continue the investigation," she said, according to the IG report. "So that’s just, that’s obviously not real. I mean, that’s just us being, you know, sort of snarky. But that’s a, that’s a joke. I mean, a reflection of that sort of joke."

For his part, Strzok said he “took and certainly believed [this text message] to be a joke.”

"I had gotten a bunch of Putin 2017 calendars where he is in various, glorious displays of Russian patriotism for each month. And we were going to give it out to the, kind of the, the closer senior members of the [Russia investigation] team, just to, you know, hey, we made it to, to Election Day just as like, you know, thanks for your hard work because people, you know, had been truly working very hard....," Strzok recalled. "To give that out and, you know, and Lisa, you know, saying, God, you know, and the thought was, you know, give it out like right around the election. And then my, my take of Lisa’s, and I think the everyman, commonsense take of this is that it’s like, God, you know, is that something you would want to, you know, want to do right now? And, you know, the secret society is entirely in jest."

Rumors of a "secret society" within the FBI that opposed Trump emerged in January with the release of more text messages between Strzok and Page, former members of special counsel Robert Mueller's Russia probe. Multiple Republicans made public statements regarding the "secret society," including Johnson, who said he had an "informant" corroborate reports concerning an anti-FBI group.

Soon afterwards, Johnson, chairman of the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee, walked back the statement, saying "it's a real possibility" that the reference was made as a joke. At the time, the Justice Department was reviewing why five months worth of messages between Strzok and Page were missing, which were then found.

The IG report Thursday revealed Strzok and Page exchanged text messages about how they would "stop" candidate Donald Trump from becoming president.

Asked for a statement on the "secret society" findings in the IG report, a Johnson spokesperson shared the senator's broad statement on the watchdog's findings.

“The Inspector General report shows real problems within the FBI and Justice Department,” said Johnson. “While some questions have been answered, many new questions have been raised. It is virtually impossible to have conclusive, irrefutable evidence that bias led to Director Comey’s exoneration of Hillary Clinton. The report shows, however, violations of FBI and DOJ policy, serious lapses in judgment, and questionable contacts with news reporters. I’d like to thank Inspector General Horowitz for a thorough investigation conducted with integrity, and look forward to his testimony before my committee on June 27th.”