The Department of Justice has recovered missing text messages between anti-Trump FBI officials Peter Strzok and Lisa Page, the Justice Department’s internal watchdog said Thursday.

Inspector General Michael Horowitz says in a letter to Congress that his office “succeeded in using forensic tools” to recover messages exchanged between December 2016 and May 2017.

The department last month began providing lawmakers with copies of text communications to and from the counterintelligence agent who was reassigned from Mueller’s team following the discovery of anti-Donald Trump messages he traded with an FBI lawyer.

The missing messages have been at the center of a storm of controversy on Capitol Hill, after the DOJ notified congressional committees that there is a gap in records between Dec. 14, 2016, and May 17, 2017. Strzok and Page are under scrutiny after it was revealed that the former members of Robert Mueller’s team exchanged a series of anti-Trump texts during the presidential campaign.

The gap in records covered a crucial period, raising suspicion among GOP lawmakers about how those messages disappeared.

More than 50,000 texts were exchanged between Strzok and Page, Attorney General Jeff Sessions revealed Monday.

Sessions had pledged to figure out how some of their texts went missing.

“We will leave no stone unturned to confirm with certainty why these text messages are not now available to be produced and will use every technology available to determine whether the missing messages are recoverable from another source,” Sessions said in a statement provided to Fox News. “If we are successful, we will update the congressional committees immediately.”

The president has fumed about the missing messages and has said they represent “one of the biggest stories in a long time.”

Horowitz says his office’s efforts to recover additional messages are continuing.

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(Fox News / AP)