It was July 31, 2016. Just days earlier, the Obama administration had quietly opened an FBI counterintelligence investigation of Russian cyber-espionage — hacking attacks — to disrupt the 2016 election. And not random, general disruption; the operating theory was that the Russians were targeting the Democratic party, for the purpose of helping Donald Trump win the presidency.
FBI special agent Peter Strzok was downright giddy that day.
The Bureau had finally put to bed “Mid Year Exam.” MYE was code for the dreaded investigation of Hillary Clinton’s improper use of a private email system to conduct State Department business, which resulted in the retention and transmission of thousands of classified emails, as well as the destruction of tens of thousands of government business records. Strzok and other FBI vets dreaded the case because it was a go-through-the-motions exercise: Everyone working on it knew that no one was going to be charged with a crime; that Mrs. Clinton was going to be the next president of the United States; and that the FBI’s goal was not to be tarnished in the process of “investigating” her — to demonstrate, without calling attention to the suffocating constraints imposed by the Obama Justice Department, that the Bureau had done a thorough job, and that there was a legal rationale for letting Clinton off the hook that might pass the laugh test.
That mission was accomplished, Strzok and his colleagues believed, with Director James Comey’s press conference on July 5, outlining the evidence and recommending against charges that “no reasonable prosecutor” would bring. Now, having run the just-for-show interview of Hillary Clinton on July 2 — long after Comey’s press statement that there would be no charges was in the can — Strzok was on the verge of a big promotion: to deputy assistant director of counterintelligence.
Even better: Now, he was working a real case — the Trump-Russia case. He was about to fly to London to meet with intelligence contacts and conduct secret interviews.
Not so secret, though, that he could contain himself.
As was his wont several times a day, Strzok texted his paramour, Lisa Page, the FBI lawyer in the lofty position of counsel to Deputy Director Andrew McCabe — which made Page one of the relative handful of Bureau officials who were in on the new probe. Late Sunday night, as he readied for his morning flight, Strzok wrote to Page, comparing the investigations of Clinton and Trump.
And damn this feels momentous. Because this matters. The other one did, too, but that was to ensure that we didn’t F something up. This matters because this MATTERS.
This MATTERS.
The Strzok-Page Texts: An Invaluable Narrative
As my weekend column detailed, the House Intelligence Committee is spearheading a congressional effort to pry disclosure from the Justice Department regarding how and why the so-called Russia investigation was opened. With Justice and anonymous intelligence-community leakers having provided conflicting explanations, the latest controversy involves the role played by a CIA and FBI informant, based in Britain, who appears to have been deployed against marginal Trump-campaign figures (such as George Papadopoulos). Several bloggers began reporting the likely identity of this source over the weekend; I am going to follow the lead of the Wall Street Journal’s Kim Strassel and resist mentioning the name — I am not in the news-breaker business, and it is likely to be confirmed soon enough.
I want to make a different point.
House Intelligence Committee chairman Devin Nunes is pressing for limited disclosure of information from the government’s closely held files. He is right to do so. No government operations can be completely beyond the examination of the people’s representatives in our constitutional republic. Here, the Obama administration took extraordinary measures to withhold information from Congress about its Trump-Russia probe — such as not briefing the bipartisan leaders of the both chambers and their intelligence committees, the “Gang of Eight.” (See transcript of Director Comey’s Testimony, March 20, 2017, questioning by Representative Elise Stefanik (R., N.Y.), House Intelligence Committee.) Besides, having litigated classified-information issues under procedures prescribed by federal law, I am confident that there are ways to get essential information disclosed without compromising intelligence methods and sources.
But all that aside, it may not be necessary to pry into informant files in order to find answers to the most pressing questions. Those answers may be found in the thousands of Strzok-Page texts. These provide a day-to-day narrative of the goings-on in the Clinton-emails and Trump-Russia investigations by two of the highest, most plugged-in officials in the government.
This fact has eluded us for months, ever since the existence of the texts was first made known. Yes, a few explosive messages have captured our attention, most notably, Strzok’s “insurance policy” assertion: An account of an August 15 discussion among top FBI officials in then-deputy director Andrew McCabe’s office, with Strzok observing that although it was highly unlikely “Trump gets elected,” the government “can’t take that risk” and needed an “insurance policy” against a Trump presidency. But for the most part, the texts have been dismissed as the ravings of star-crossed lovers whose loathing of Trump and disdain for Trump supporters should not be thought to reflect on the Bureau’s legions of hard-working non-partisans.
That’s the wrong way to look at it.
Strzok and Page are singularly well-informed, central players in the Clinton and Trump investigations. They tell us exactly what is going on and why — or at least they would if the Justice Department had not blacked out key parts of their running conversation.
Like Hillary, these people seem interested in protecting information only as it pertains to their own personal agendas. The problem, of course, is when these agendas are a campaign to depose a sitting President for no reason other than that he is not Hillary (and thank God for THAT).
The more information that becomes available, shows just how close Americans came to losing their country. The “all will be well” when Hillary becomes president scenario is scary. All of these treasonous plotters were confident they would be excused from having to account for their treasonous acts because they had saved Hillary from prison or worse. They had the utmost confidence that their insurance policy would work in the event Trump actually won. The Comey/Brennen swamp counted on the “never Trumpers”, the MSM and the Democrat base to not defend Trump.
A funny thing happened after a year in the White House. Trump actually did what he said he would do, unlike most politicians. As e continued to keep his promises, he won over more and more people to his cause. The swamp didn’t account for some republican legislators who had back bones. (Those with out back bones can not conceive that others may have one!) The congress and the Judicial Department are going to have to clean house and penalize the traitors to give the country back to the people.