The Justice Department is waiting for an inspector general report to determine if FBI agent Peter Strzok and agency attorney Lisa Page were kidding around when they mentioned a "secret society" in one of their text messages, Justice Department spokeswoman Sarah Isgur Flores said Thursday.
"It's unclear," Flores told CNN "New Day" host Chris Cuomo.
"That's why we wait for an inspector general report, who is investigating this."
Flores also made a joke of her own when Cuomo asked her if she'd seen proof of a secret or shadow organization trying to undermine justice.
"I'm not a member of any secret society," she told Cuomo.
"How do we know?" he replied.
"I suppose that's very true, Chris, you don't," Flores told him, adding her version of a quote from the 1999 Brad Pitt movie "Fight Club": "The first rule about secret society, you don't talk about secret society."
Strzok, a member of the FBI team that was investigating Hillary Clinton's email server and Page, were involved in a romantic relationship when they exchanged tens of thousands of text messages. The FBI has admitted to losing five months of the messages the couple exchanged, along with text messages that had been sent by other FBI agents.
Meanwhile, ABC News reported Thursday that the message that has come under scrutiny may have been sent in jest.
"Are you even going to give out your calendars?" Page wrote to Strzok, according to a copy of the text ABC obtained. "Seems kind of depressing. Maybe it should just be the first meeting of the secret society," Page wrote to Strzok.
The text also had no messages sent immediately before or after the "secret society" message, making it more difficult to determine what Page had meant, noted ABC.
Flores also commented on a House Intelligence Committee's memo alleging FBI abuses of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act and a dossier that was compiled about Trump and Russia.
Committee members want to release the document, but the DOJ warned on Wednesday that that could be an "extraordinarily reckless" act if the memo is first vetted.
"A lot of congressmen have seen it and a lot of congressmen have been disturbed by it," Flores told Cuomo. "And so I think what we're saying is, if you have evidence of wrongdoing, we really need to see that."