Rep. Jim Jordan James (Jim) Daniel JordanHouse panel pulls Powell into partisan battles over pandemic Sunday shows preview: Justice Ginsburg dies, sparking partisan battle over vacancy before election House passes resolution condemning anti-Asian discrimination relating to coronavirus MORE (R-Ohio) told Justice Department Inspector General Michael Horowitz on Thursday that he wants to know why Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein Rod RosensteinDOJ kept investigators from completing probe of Trump ties to Russia: report Five takeaways from final Senate Intel Russia report FBI officials hid copies of Russia probe documents fearing Trump interference: book MORE delayed the release of a text conversation between FBI agent Peter Strzok and FBI attorney Lisa Page that was critical of President Trump Donald John TrumpBiden on Trump's refusal to commit to peaceful transfer of power: 'What country are we in?' Romney: 'Unthinkable and unacceptable' to not commit to peaceful transition of power Two Louisville police officers shot amid Breonna Taylor grand jury protests MORE.

"If you uncovered it a month ago, why did we not see it until last Thursday?" Jordan asked Horowitz during a hearing before the House Judiciary and the House Oversight and Government Reform committees.

ADVERTISEMENT

"I can't answer that question. We provided the materials to the department," Horowitz said. "I can't answer that question. We provided the materials to the department," Horowitz said.

"But who made the decision? Was it Mr. Wray? Was it Mr. Rosenstein? Was it Mr. Sessions?" Jordan asked, referring to the FBI director, deputy attorney general and attorney general, respectively.

"What we have done, as we've found these texts, is send them to the department, and for them to produce it to Congress, and that's what we did in May," Horowitz replied.

"Who at the department dealt with it?" Jordan asked.

"We sent it to the office of the deputy attorney general," Horowitz said.

"I can't speak to whether anyone made a conscious decision. I will just say that we, in that fourth recovery we made in May, there was a hundred plus lines of texts to go through, most all of them we've found before. This one was one we hadn't. We didn't see it or pick it up until June," Horowitz said.

"Did you not see it? Or was it hidden from you? Because we have the text message right before it, and the one right after it, but somehow that one, the most explosive one, was missing from the pages we got months ago," Jordan said.

Horowitz said he did not believe the department had the text messages initially and that the department had to go through other channels to obtain them.

"You had to jump through all kinds of hoops to retrieve it. The point is when you did get it, Mr. Rosenstein decided we couldn't get it until your report came out. He sat on it for a month of time," Jordan said, referring to the report the inspector general released last week on his findings on the Justice Department's investigative work in 2016.

"It's not the first time Mr. Rosenstein has kept us from getting information," Jordan said.

"He redacted all kinds of important conversations between Strzok and Page," he continued. "We had to go over to the Justice Department and find it."

The exchange highlights growing tensions between the Justice Department and House Republicans. Rosenstein has been a particular target of some Republicans, who have even raised the idea of impeachment

The two lawmakers have argued that the Justice Department is not cooperating with Congress.