Story highlights The messages between Peter Strzok and Lisa Page are of particular interest to Republicans

Trump has called the matter "one of the biggest stories in a long time"

Washington (CNN) The Justice Department's inspector general has informed lawmakers that a trove of missing text messages exchanged between FBI employees has been recovered.

The messages between Peter Strzok and Lisa Page are of particular interest to Republicans who believe there is an anti-Donald Trump bias at the FBI. Strzok, who was romantically involved with Page, was a member of the FBI team investigating Hillary Clinton's email server and, later, a member of Robert Mueller's special counsel operation looking into Russia's attempt to interfere in the 2016 election.

In a letter to lawmakers on Thursday, Justice Department Inspector General Michael Horowitz wrote that this week his office was able to recover texts sent between Strzok and Page over a five-month span from December 2016 to May 2017.

"The OIG has been investigating this matter and, this week, succeeded in using forensic tools to recover text messages from FBI devices, including text messages between Mr. Strzok and Ms. Page that were sent or received between December 14, 2016, and May 17, 2017," Horowitz wrote in the letter, which was provided to CNN by the office of Senate Homeland Security Committee Chairman Ron Johnson, R-Wisconsin.

The gap in the exchange between the top FBI officials was revealed to lawmakers by the Justice Department as it produced a second batch of the pair's text messages to six congressional committees over the weekend. The texts themselves were first discovered as part of an internal investigation by the inspector general into the FBI's handling of the Clinton email investigation.

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