WASHINGTON — The Justice Department invited a group of reporters to its offices on Tuesday night to view private text messages sent during the 2016 campaign by Peter Strzok and Lisa Page, former investigators on the special counsel Robert Mueller's team, Business Insider has learned.

President Donald Trump's allies have seized on the texts, which were critical of Trump, describing them as evidence that Mueller's investigation into Russia's interference in last year's election, including whether members of Trump's campaign colluded with Moscow, has been tainted.

The texts were obtained as part of an investigation this year by the DOJ's inspector general into how the FBI handled the probe into Hillary Clinton's use of a private email server while she was secretary of state.

Strzok, a veteran counterintelligence agent who was among those overseeing the Clinton investigation, was abruptly removed from Mueller's team in late July and relegated to the human-resources department. Page left over the summer for unrelated reasons.

It is "highly unusual" for the DOJ to release correspondences that are the subject of an ongoing investigation to Congress, let alone to the press, a source on one of the congressional committees investigating Russia's election interference told Business Insider on Wednesday.

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