GOP Rep. Matt Gaetz said on Friday that the DOJ was forced to release texts sent former special counsel investigators because the House Intelligence Committee chairman was about to subpoena them.

The DOJ's decision to share the texts with Congress and the media on Tuesday was controversial, because the texts are the subject of an ongoing inspector general investigation.



Republican Rep. Matt Gaetz on Friday said the Justice Department was "forced" to release private text messages exchanged between former special counsel investigators Peter Strzok and Lisa Page because House Intelligence Chair Devin Nunes "was about to subpoena them."

During an interview, CNN anchor Chris Cuomo had asked Gaetz, a Republican member of the House Judiciary Committee who has introduced a resolution to remove special counsel Robert Mueller from his post, what he knows about the ongoing investigation that has led him to believe it has been tainted.

"What do you know that Rod Rosenstein does not?" Cuomo asked, referring to the deputy attorney general.

"Well, Chris, all the American people can see the text messages that were forced to be released 'cause Devin Nunes was about to subpoena them," Gaetz said.

Nunes had threatened to hold Rosenstein and FBI Director Chris Wray in contempt of Congress earlier this month if they did not respond to his requests for more information about Strzok, who was abruptly removed from Mueller's team in late July after the FBI became aware of text messages he had sent between 2015 and 2016. In the texts, he referred to President Donald Trump as an "idiot," among other things.

Nunes' threat followed news reports about the nature of the texts, which had not yet been publicly released by the DOJ. A department spokeswoman, Sarah Isgur Flores, said in a statement on Thursday that some members of the media had received early copies of the texts even though those disclosures had not been authorized by the department.

It is not clear that Nunes' threats are what ultimately prompted the DOJ to release the texts to members of Congress and the media on Tuesday, in what legal experts have characterized as an unusual move amid an ongoing OIG investigation.

The Justice Department and a spokesman for Nunes did not immediately return a request for comment.

Democratic members of the House Judiciary Committee sent a letter to Flores on Thursday asking her to explain who approved the invitation to reporters and whether she consulted with the inspector general's office beforehand.

The Democrats sent the inspector general, Michael Horowitz, a letter with similar questions.

Flores told Politico in a statement that Rosenstein had consulted with the inspector general, who "determined that he had no objection to the department's providing the material to the congressional committees that had requested it."

The statement did not appear to address questions about whether the inspector general's office approved the release of the texts to the media.

It said senior career ethics advisers "determined that there were no legal or ethical concerns, including under the Privacy Act, that prohibited the release of the information to the public either by members of Congress or by the department."