Someone types on a Samsung Electronics Galaxy Note 8 smartphone, similar to those used by the FBI
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If you haven’t been on the internet lately, you’d be forgiven for thinking “the texts” was the name of some new millennial boy band.
If you’ve been anywhere near a computer or iPhone, however, you likely know that “the texts” refers to hundreds of recently released messages exchanged by two FBI agents working on the Special Counsel investigation into Donald Trump’s possible ties to Russia.
The messages set off a firestorm on the right, with conservatives claiming they contain evidence of everything from biased FBI agents to the existence of a secret society within the agency. But what’s really contained in these texts, and what do they mean? Keep reading for everything you need to know.
The biggest names involved in the Trump-Russia investigation
The biggest names involved in the Trump-Russia investigation
1/17 Paul Manafort
Mr Manafort is a Republican strategist and former Trump campaign manager. He resigned from that post over questions about his extensive lobbying overseas, including in Ukraine where he represented pro-Russian interests.
Mr Manafort turned himself in at FBI headquarters to special counsel Robert Mueller’s team on Oct 30, 2017, after he was indicted under seal on charges that include conspiracy against the United States, conspiracy to launder money, unregistered agent of a foreign principal, false and misleading US Foreign Agents Registration Act statements, false statements, and seven counts of failure to file reports of foreign bank and financial accounts.
Getty
2/17 Rick Gates
Mr Gates joined the Trump team in spring 2016, and served as a top aide until he left to work at the Republican National Committee after the departure of former Trump campaign manager Paul Manafort.
Mr Gates' had previously worked on several presidential campaigns, on international political campaigns in Europe and Africa, and had 15 years of political or financial experience with multinational firms, according to his bio.
Mr Gates was indicted alongside Mr Manafort by special counsel Robert Mueller's team on charges that include conspiracy against the United States, conspiracy to launder money, unregistered agent of a foreign principal, false and misleading US Foreign Agents Registration Act statements, false statements, and seven counts of failure to file reports of foreign bank and financial accounts.
AP
3/17 George Papadopoulos
George Papadopoulos was a former foreign policy adviser for the Trump campaign, having joined around March 2016.
Mr Papadopoulos plead guilty to federal charges for lying to the FBI as a part of a cooperation agreement with Special Counsel Robert Mueller's investigation.
Mr Papadopoulos claimed in an interview with the FBI that he had made contacts with Russian sources before joining the Trump campaign, but he actually began working with them after joining the team.
Mr Papadopoulos allegedly took a meeting with a professor in London who reportedly told him that Russians had "dirt" on Hillary Clinton. The professor also allegedly introduced Mr Papadopoulos to a Russian who was said to have close ties to officials at the Russian Ministry of Foreign Affairs.
Mr Papadopoulos also allegedly was in contact with a woman whom he incorrectly described in one email to others in the campaign as the "niece" to Russian President Vladimir Putin.
Twitter
4/17 Donald Trump Jr
The President's eldest son met with a Russian lawyer - Natalia Veselnitskaya - on 9 June 2016 at Trump Tower in New York. He said in an initial statement that the meeting was about Russia halting adoptions of its children by US citizens. Then, he said it was regarding the Magnitsky Act, a US law blacklisting Russian human rights abusers. In a final statement, Mr Trump Jr released a chain of emails that revealed he took the meeting in hopes of getting information Ms Veselnitskaya had about Hillary Clinton's alleged financial ties to Russia. He and the President called it standard "opposition research" in the course of campaigning and that no information came from the meeting. The meeting was set up by an intermediary, Rob Goldstone. Jared Kushner and Paul Manafort were also at the same meeting.
Getty Images
5/17 Jared Kushner
Mr Kushner is President Donald Trump's son-in-law and a key adviser to the White House. He met with a Russian banker appointed by Russian President Vladimir Putin in December. Mr Kushner has said he did so in his role as an adviser to Mr Trump while the bank says he did so as a private developer.
Mr Kushner has also volunteered to testify in the Senate about his role helping to arrange meetings between Trump advisers and Russian Ambassador to the US Sergey Kislyak.
Getty Images
6/17 Rob Goldstone
Former tabloid journalist and now music publicist Rob Goldstone is a contact of the Trump family through the previously Trump-owned 2013 Miss Universe pageant, which took place in Moscow. In June 2016, he wrote to Donald Trump Jr offering a meeting with a Russian lawyer, Natalya Veselnitskaya, who had information about Hillary Clinton. Mr Goldstone was the intermediary for Russian pop star Emin Agalaraov and his father, real estate magnate Aras, who played a role in putting on the 2013 pageant. In an email chain released by Mr Trump Jr, Mr Goldstone seemed to indicate Russian government's support of Donald Trump's campaign.
AP images
7/17 Aras and Emin Agalarov
Aras Agalarov (R) is a wealthy Moscow-based real estate magnate and son Emin (L) is a pop star. Both played a role in putting on the previously Trump-owned 2013 Miss Universe pageant in Moscow. They allegedly had information about Hillary Clinton and offered that information to the Trump campaign through a lawyer with whom they had worked with, Natalia Veselnitskaya, and music publicist Rob Goldstone.
Getty Images
8/17 Natalia Veselnitskaya
Natalia Veselnitskaya is a Russian lawyer with ties to the Kremlin. She has worked on real estate issues and reportedly counted the FSB as a client in the past. She has ties to a Trump family connection, real estate magnate Aras Agalarov, who had helped set up the Trump-owned 2013 Miss Universe pageant which took place in Moscow. Ms Veselnitskaya met with Donald Trump Jr, Jared Kushner, and Paul Manafort in Trump Tower on 9 June 2016 but denies the allegation that she went there promising information on Hillary Clinton's alleged financial ties to Russia. She contends that the meeting was about the US adoptions of Russian children being stopped by Moscow as a reaction to the Magnitsky Act, a US law blacklisting Russian human rights abusers.
Getty Images
9/17 Mike Flynn
Mr Flynn was named as Trump's national security adviser but was forced to resign from his post for inappropriate communication with Russian Ambassador to the US Sergey Kislyak. He had misrepresented a conversation he had with Mr Kislyak to Vice President Mike Pence, telling him wrongly that he had not discussed sanctions with the Russian.
Getty Images
10/17 Sergey Kislyak
Mr Kislyak, the former longtime Russian ambassador to the US, is at the centre of the web said to connect President Donald Trump's campaign with Russia.
Reuters
11/17 Roger Stone
Mr Stone is a former Trump adviser who worked on the political campaigns of Richard Nixon, George HW Bush, and Ronald Reagan.
Mr Stone claimed repeatedly in the final months of the campaign that he had backchannel communications with WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange and that he knew the group was going to dump damaging documents to the campaign of Democratic candidate Hillary Clinton - which did happen. Mr Stone also had contacts with the hacker Guccier 2.0 on Twitter, who claimed to have hacked the DNC and is linked to Russian intelligence services.
Getty Images
12/17 Jeff Sessions
The US attorney general was forced to recuse himself from the Trump-Russia investigation after it was learned that he had lied about meeting with Russian Ambassador to the US Sergey Kislyak.
Getty Images
13/17 Carter Page
Mr Page is a former advisor to the Trump campaign and has a background working as an investment banker at Merrill Lynch.
Mr Page met with Russian Ambassador to the US Sergey Kislyak during the 2016 Republican National Convention in Cleveland.
Mr Page had invested in oil companies connected to Russia and had admitted that US Russia sanctions had hurt his bottom line.
Reuters
14/17 Jeffrey "JD" Gorden
Mr Gordon met with Russian Ambassador to the US Sergey Kislyak during the 2016 Republian National Convention to discuss how the US and Russia could work together to combat Islamist extremism should then-Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump win the election. The meeting came days before a massive leak of DNC emails that has been connected to Russia.
Creative Commons
15/17 James Comey
Mr Comey was fired from his post as head of the FBI by President Donald Trump. The timing of Mr Comey's firing raised questions around whether or not the FBI's investigation into the Trump campaign may have played a role in the decision.
Getty Images
16/17 Preet Bharara
Mr Bahara refused, alongside 46 other US district attorney's across the country, to resign once President Donald Trump took office after previous assurances from Mr Trump that he would keep his job.
Mr Bahara had been heading up several investigations including one into one of President Donald Trump's favorite cable television channels Fox News.
Several investigations would lead back to that district, too, including those into Mr Trump's campaign ties to Russia, and Mr Trump's assertion that Trump Tower was wiretapped on orders from his predecessor.
Getty Images
17/17 Sally Yates
Ms Yates, a former Deputy Attorney General, was running the Justice Department while President Donald Trump's pick for attorney general awaited confirmation. Ms Yates was later fired by Mr Trump from her temporary post over her refusal to implement Mr Trump's first travel ban.
She had also warned the White House about potential ties former National Security Adviser Michael Flynn to Russia after discovering those ties during the FBI's investigation into the Trump campaign's connections to Russia.
Getty Images
1/17 Paul Manafort
Mr Manafort is a Republican strategist and former Trump campaign manager. He resigned from that post over questions about his extensive lobbying overseas, including in Ukraine where he represented pro-Russian interests.
Mr Manafort turned himself in at FBI headquarters to special counsel Robert Mueller’s team on Oct 30, 2017, after he was indicted under seal on charges that include conspiracy against the United States, conspiracy to launder money, unregistered agent of a foreign principal, false and misleading US Foreign Agents Registration Act statements, false statements, and seven counts of failure to file reports of foreign bank and financial accounts.
Getty
2/17 Rick Gates
Mr Gates joined the Trump team in spring 2016, and served as a top aide until he left to work at the Republican National Committee after the departure of former Trump campaign manager Paul Manafort.
Mr Gates' had previously worked on several presidential campaigns, on international political campaigns in Europe and Africa, and had 15 years of political or financial experience with multinational firms, according to his bio.
Mr Gates was indicted alongside Mr Manafort by special counsel Robert Mueller's team on charges that include conspiracy against the United States, conspiracy to launder money, unregistered agent of a foreign principal, false and misleading US Foreign Agents Registration Act statements, false statements, and seven counts of failure to file reports of foreign bank and financial accounts.
AP
3/17 George Papadopoulos
George Papadopoulos was a former foreign policy adviser for the Trump campaign, having joined around March 2016.
Mr Papadopoulos plead guilty to federal charges for lying to the FBI as a part of a cooperation agreement with Special Counsel Robert Mueller's investigation.
Mr Papadopoulos claimed in an interview with the FBI that he had made contacts with Russian sources before joining the Trump campaign, but he actually began working with them after joining the team.
Mr Papadopoulos allegedly took a meeting with a professor in London who reportedly told him that Russians had "dirt" on Hillary Clinton. The professor also allegedly introduced Mr Papadopoulos to a Russian who was said to have close ties to officials at the Russian Ministry of Foreign Affairs.
Mr Papadopoulos also allegedly was in contact with a woman whom he incorrectly described in one email to others in the campaign as the "niece" to Russian President Vladimir Putin.
Twitter
4/17 Donald Trump Jr
The President's eldest son met with a Russian lawyer - Natalia Veselnitskaya - on 9 June 2016 at Trump Tower in New York. He said in an initial statement that the meeting was about Russia halting adoptions of its children by US citizens. Then, he said it was regarding the Magnitsky Act, a US law blacklisting Russian human rights abusers. In a final statement, Mr Trump Jr released a chain of emails that revealed he took the meeting in hopes of getting information Ms Veselnitskaya had about Hillary Clinton's alleged financial ties to Russia. He and the President called it standard "opposition research" in the course of campaigning and that no information came from the meeting. The meeting was set up by an intermediary, Rob Goldstone. Jared Kushner and Paul Manafort were also at the same meeting.
Getty Images
5/17 Jared Kushner
Mr Kushner is President Donald Trump's son-in-law and a key adviser to the White House. He met with a Russian banker appointed by Russian President Vladimir Putin in December. Mr Kushner has said he did so in his role as an adviser to Mr Trump while the bank says he did so as a private developer.
Mr Kushner has also volunteered to testify in the Senate about his role helping to arrange meetings between Trump advisers and Russian Ambassador to the US Sergey Kislyak.
Getty Images
6/17 Rob Goldstone
Former tabloid journalist and now music publicist Rob Goldstone is a contact of the Trump family through the previously Trump-owned 2013 Miss Universe pageant, which took place in Moscow. In June 2016, he wrote to Donald Trump Jr offering a meeting with a Russian lawyer, Natalya Veselnitskaya, who had information about Hillary Clinton. Mr Goldstone was the intermediary for Russian pop star Emin Agalaraov and his father, real estate magnate Aras, who played a role in putting on the 2013 pageant. In an email chain released by Mr Trump Jr, Mr Goldstone seemed to indicate Russian government's support of Donald Trump's campaign.
AP images
7/17 Aras and Emin Agalarov
Aras Agalarov (R) is a wealthy Moscow-based real estate magnate and son Emin (L) is a pop star. Both played a role in putting on the previously Trump-owned 2013 Miss Universe pageant in Moscow. They allegedly had information about Hillary Clinton and offered that information to the Trump campaign through a lawyer with whom they had worked with, Natalia Veselnitskaya, and music publicist Rob Goldstone.
Getty Images
8/17 Natalia Veselnitskaya
Natalia Veselnitskaya is a Russian lawyer with ties to the Kremlin. She has worked on real estate issues and reportedly counted the FSB as a client in the past. She has ties to a Trump family connection, real estate magnate Aras Agalarov, who had helped set up the Trump-owned 2013 Miss Universe pageant which took place in Moscow. Ms Veselnitskaya met with Donald Trump Jr, Jared Kushner, and Paul Manafort in Trump Tower on 9 June 2016 but denies the allegation that she went there promising information on Hillary Clinton's alleged financial ties to Russia. She contends that the meeting was about the US adoptions of Russian children being stopped by Moscow as a reaction to the Magnitsky Act, a US law blacklisting Russian human rights abusers.
Getty Images
9/17 Mike Flynn
Mr Flynn was named as Trump's national security adviser but was forced to resign from his post for inappropriate communication with Russian Ambassador to the US Sergey Kislyak. He had misrepresented a conversation he had with Mr Kislyak to Vice President Mike Pence, telling him wrongly that he had not discussed sanctions with the Russian.
Getty Images
10/17 Sergey Kislyak
Mr Kislyak, the former longtime Russian ambassador to the US, is at the centre of the web said to connect President Donald Trump's campaign with Russia.
Reuters
11/17 Roger Stone
Mr Stone is a former Trump adviser who worked on the political campaigns of Richard Nixon, George HW Bush, and Ronald Reagan.
Mr Stone claimed repeatedly in the final months of the campaign that he had backchannel communications with WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange and that he knew the group was going to dump damaging documents to the campaign of Democratic candidate Hillary Clinton - which did happen. Mr Stone also had contacts with the hacker Guccier 2.0 on Twitter, who claimed to have hacked the DNC and is linked to Russian intelligence services.
Getty Images
12/17 Jeff Sessions
The US attorney general was forced to recuse himself from the Trump-Russia investigation after it was learned that he had lied about meeting with Russian Ambassador to the US Sergey Kislyak.
Getty Images
13/17 Carter Page
Mr Page is a former advisor to the Trump campaign and has a background working as an investment banker at Merrill Lynch.
Mr Page met with Russian Ambassador to the US Sergey Kislyak during the 2016 Republican National Convention in Cleveland.
Mr Page had invested in oil companies connected to Russia and had admitted that US Russia sanctions had hurt his bottom line.
Reuters
14/17 Jeffrey "JD" Gorden
Mr Gordon met with Russian Ambassador to the US Sergey Kislyak during the 2016 Republian National Convention to discuss how the US and Russia could work together to combat Islamist extremism should then-Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump win the election. The meeting came days before a massive leak of DNC emails that has been connected to Russia.
Creative Commons
15/17 James Comey
Mr Comey was fired from his post as head of the FBI by President Donald Trump. The timing of Mr Comey's firing raised questions around whether or not the FBI's investigation into the Trump campaign may have played a role in the decision.
Getty Images
16/17 Preet Bharara
Mr Bahara refused, alongside 46 other US district attorney's across the country, to resign once President Donald Trump took office after previous assurances from Mr Trump that he would keep his job.
Mr Bahara had been heading up several investigations including one into one of President Donald Trump's favorite cable television channels Fox News.
Several investigations would lead back to that district, too, including those into Mr Trump's campaign ties to Russia, and Mr Trump's assertion that Trump Tower was wiretapped on orders from his predecessor.
Getty Images
17/17 Sally Yates
Ms Yates, a former Deputy Attorney General, was running the Justice Department while President Donald Trump's pick for attorney general awaited confirmation. Ms Yates was later fired by Mr Trump from her temporary post over her refusal to implement Mr Trump's first travel ban.
She had also warned the White House about potential ties former National Security Adviser Michael Flynn to Russia after discovering those ties during the FBI's investigation into the Trump campaign's connections to Russia.
Getty Images
What are the texts?
“The texts” is shorthand for the text messages exchanged by FBI agent Peter Strzok and FBI lawyer Lisa Page over the last two years. The two briefly worked on special counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation into possible Trump campaign collusion with Russia. They also reportedly engaged in an extramarital affair.
A number of the messages exchanged before the election contain anti-Trump, pro-Clinton sentiments – including several where Mr Strzok calls the President an “idiot”. Many of the texts were exchanged while Mr Strzok was working on an investigation into Hillary Clinton’s private email server.
Mr Strzok was removed from the Mueller investigation in June of last year, after the messages were discovered. Ms Page left several weeks earlier for unrelated reasons, according to the Justice Department.
Special Counsel Robert Mueller departs after briefing members of the US Senate (REUTERS/Joshua Roberts)
How did they come to light?
Michael Horowitz, the Justice Department Inspector General, discovered the texts during a review of the Clinton email investigation last year. The Justice Department handed over almost 400 of the messages to Congress that December.
Earlier this month, however, the Justice Department said that another batch of texts – those exchanged between 14 December, 2016, and 17 May, 2017 – had been lost due to a technical glitch. The five-month period of time included the day former national security adviser Michael Flynn was fired, and ended the day the special counsel was appointed.
After a flurry of condemnation from conservatives, Mr Horowitz announced this week that his office had recovered the texts via “forensic tools”. The Inspector General said in a letter to Congressional leaders that he would provide copies of the messages to the Justice Department, and would not object if the Department turned them over to Congress.
Donald Trump calls Robert Mueller story 'fake news' and compliments 'tremendous crowd' in Davos
What are the conspiracy theories around them?
Conservatives leapt on the first batch of texts – in which Mr Strzok called Mr Trump and “idiot” and Ms Page called him a “loathsome human” – as evidence of anti-Trump bias in the FBI and Mr Mueller’s team.
But when the Justice Department announced it had lost five months’ worth of the pairs’ text messages, the allegations of “bias” turned to cries of “coverup”.
“Are we really supposed to believe that the FBI simply lost text messages from that important time frame? This is like Watergate but far worse,” Fox News host Sean Hannity told his viewers. “This reeks of law-breaking, it reeks of conspiracy, and it reeks of obstruction of justice.”
Even Mr Trump weighed in, calling the missing texts "one of the biggest stories in a long time”.
"The FBI now says it is missing five months worth of lovers Strzok-Page texts," he tweeted, "perhaps 50,000, and all in prime time. Wow!"
Senator Ron Johnson, the chairman of the Senate Homeland Security Committee, even suggested that one of the texts alluded the the existence of a “secret society” inside the FBI. Mr Johnson refused to publicly release the full message, but claimed a “whistleblower” had corroborated his theory.
Senator Ron Johnson raised the possibility of a secret society inside the FBI (Win McNamee/Getty Images)
Do any of these theories have legs?
The “secret society” theory appears to be crumbling as fast as it materialised. Several news outlets gained access to the full text message this week, revealing that the comment was likely made in jest.
"Are you even going to give out your calendars?” Ms Page wrote to Mr Strzok the day after Mr Trump was elected. “Seems kind of depressing. Maybe it should just be the first meeting of the secret society.”
After the full text was published, Mr Johnson admitted that it was a “real possibility” that the “secret society” reference was a joke.
The Justice Department, meanwhile, has attempted to dispel theories of an agency-endorsed cover-up. The agency said the “lost” messages – the ones re-discovered by Mr Horowitz –went missing while the FBI was upgrading its Samsung 7 phones.
In a letter to House Intelligence Committee Chairman Devin Nunes, the agency said that the phones, "did not capture or store text messages due to misconfiguration issues related to rollouts, provisioning, and software upgrades that conflicted with the FBI's collection capabilities”.
Donald Trump claims he would be interviewed 'under oath' by Robert Mueller
Why is the right so focused on these messages?
Conservatives claim that these texts show anti-Trump bias – and even possible anti-Trump conspiracies – within the very offices tasked with investigating him and his election rival.
Right-wing pundits have long claimed that the FBI investigation into Ms Clinton’s email server was flawed. (Mr Trump even cited James Comey’s handling of the investigation when he fired his former FBI director last year.) The text messages provide the clearest evidence to date of some kind of bias within the FBI – even if it was just private messages between two employees.
The messages also come as Mr Mueller’s investigation appears to be entering the home stretch. The special counsel has spoken to members of Mr Trump’s White House – and even his family – and is now reportedly seeking to interview the President himself.
According to Democrats, the outcry over the text messages is just an attempt to undermine Mr Mueller’s team, and to distract from whatever conclusion he puts forward.
“Ever since special counsel Mueller was appointed, Republicans and the right-wing media have been desperate to distract the nation from his investigation,” Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer said on Thursday. “...That political smear campaign has now bled into a spiralling and delusional attack on the FBI itself.”
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