For conservatives praying that Robert Mueller’s Russia probe might go away, Lisa Page and Peter Strzok’s extramarital affair was a godsend. Before their involvement in the Mueller probe, the two F.B.I. employees had sent dozens of texts to each other disparaging Donald Trump, which was enough for the right to impugn the entire investigation. To Trumpworld, the texts further proved the bias of special counsel Robert Mueller, whose inquiry Sean Hannity recently disparaged as “a disgrace to the American justice system.” Trump, too, has seized on allegations of bias to dismiss the Russia investigation as a “witch hunt.” On Friday, when asked whether he would pardon his onetime aide Michael Flynn, the president told reporters, “I can say this: When you look at what’s gone on with the F.B.I. and with the Justice Department, people are very, very angry.”

But as the F.B.I. has become a political cudgel—much to the chagrin of F.B.I. agents themselves—Democrats, who once accused the agency of anti-Clinton bias, are now questioning the context around the texts’ release. The messages were part of D.O.J. inspector general Michael Horowitz’s ongoing probe into how the F.B.I. handled its investigation into both Hillary Clinton’s use of a private e-mail server, and the Trump campaign’s alleged ties to Russia. Originally released to key members of the House Judiciary Committee prior to Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein’s hearing, the texts were also shared with select members of the media, a move The New York Times called “highly unusual.”

The D.O.J.’s choice to publicize the texts was already a subject of scrutiny, but on Thursday department spokeswoman Sarah Isgur Flores acknowledged that some reporters had seen the texts before the D.O.J. formally invited them to review the documents: “As we understand now, some members of the media had already received copies of the texts,” she said. “But those disclosures were not authorized by the department.” Jerrold Nadler, the ranking Democrat on the House Judiciary Committee, and two other Democrats, have asked for a full review of the decision to leak the texts to the press. “Who at the Department of Justice approved your decision to invite the press to view these text messages?” they wrote Isgur Flores in a letter Thursday, demanding a full accounting of the review process. “Did you consult with any official at the Office of the Inspector General about sharing these text messages with the press prior to the Department’s doing so? Who attended this media briefing?”

Rosenstein defended the D.O.J.’s decision during his Wednesday hearing. When asked why the texts, in which Strzok and Page called Trump a “douche” and “TERRIFYING,” had been made public, and whether they were relevant to the Mueller probe overall, he replied, “Generally speaking, our goal is to be as forthcoming with the media as we can when it is lawful and appropriate to do so. So I would not approve anybody disclosing something that was not appropriate to disclose.” (He was not asked to address the unauthorized disclosures.) Isgur Flores, too, defended the first, authorized release: the inspector general, she said, “determined that he had no objection to the department's providing the material to the congressional committees that had requested it,” and ethics advisers did not oppose providing the texts to Congress.

Though Trump allies have latched onto the “over 10,000” texts as damning evidence of bias, in any other environment they would read as two stressed-out government employees in the midst of an affair texting about whatever they found frustrating that day. Strzok and Page’s complaints extended not just to Trump but also to Chelsea Clinton (“self-entitled”), Bernie Sanders (“idiot”), and even their then-boss, Eric Holder (“Turn it off!!!”). “I would be very interested in reading their texts about HRC on their ‘untraceable’ phones,” tweeted Wall Street Journal’s Del Quentin Wilbur, who read each of the 375 texts released to reporters. “If Trump were to get his wish to prosecute Mrs. Clinton, her lawyers will have a field day with that problem. Shocker: just as Trump’s lawyers/supporters are having a field day with these!”