Peter Strzok told Congress in 2018 that he deleted “personal” communications he had with his mistress, Lisa Page

DC: Former FBI official Peter Strzok told Congress in 2018 that he deleted “personal” communications he had with his mistress, former FBI attorney Lisa Page.

“As a fact of the matter, following the — at some point, I — you know, it was related to personal reasons — deleted all those,” Strzok told lawmakers on June 27, 2018, according to a transcript of the testimony released Thursday.

“But they were the personal communications, not the work ones,” added Strzok, who acknowledged having an extramarital affair with Page.

Aitan Goelman, an attorney for Strzok, told The Daily Caller News Foundation on Thursday that Strzok deleted the messages before he was removed from the Mueller team.

“Pete deleted personal communications from his personal iPhone before and unrelated to these investigations,” said Goelman, who added in a follow-up comment that the deletions were made prior to July 27, 2017, when Strzok was kicked off the Mueller probe.

Goelman did not provide a specific date for the deletions.

Strzok, who was fired from the FBI in August 2018, said he had been contacted by the Justice Department’s Office of the Inspector General (OIG) to provide any work-related communications he had on his personal cellphone and email accounts.

As deputy chief of FBI’s counterintelligence division, Strzok oversaw the Trump-Russia investigation, dubbed Crossfire Hurricane. He also played a leading role in the Hillary Clinton email investigation, which focused on whether the 2016 presidential candidate mishandled classified information on her private email server.

One issue that arose during that investigation was Clinton’s decision to delete around 30,000 emails that she deemed to be personal in nature. The former secretary of state provided another 30,000 emails to the State Department in December 2014. Republicans have asserted that Clinton may have deleted work-related emails as well from her server, which was housed at her private residence in New York.  more here