Washington (CNN) The Justice Department's internal watchdog confirmed late Friday that it did not object to the department's decision to release to Congress earlier this week a set of controversial text messages exchanged between two FBI officials.

The text messages, from a once top FBI counterintelligence official, Peter Strzok, included insults flung toward then-candidate Donald Trump and were used as bullet points in arguments by Republicans at Wednesday's House Judiciary Committee oversight hearing to suggest that the FBI and the special counsel Robert Mueller's Russia probe were tainted. Strzok led the FBI's Hillary Clinton email investigation and briefly served on Mueller's team investigating interference by Russia in the 2016 election.

He was removed from the team over the summer after the messages were discovered as a part of an ongoing investigation by the DOJ's inspector general into the FBI's actions leading up to the election.

Top Democrats on the House Judiciary Committee have been pressing the Justice Department's press shop since Wednesday's hearing to explain how members of the press obtained the messages on the eve of Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein's appearance in front of the committee.

Rosenstein said Wednesday's hearing that "one of my concerns about this issue is -- what is the status of these messages and is it appropriate to release them?"

Read More