Top Republicans in Congress continue to scrutinize the anti-President Donald Trump texts between FBI officials Peter Strzok and Lisa Page. The two officials were romantically involved and worked on Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s Russia investigation. He kicked Strzok off the team over the summer due to these texts.
But a specific text caught the eye of the top Republicans. In this one, it mentions an “insurance policy” against Trump’s presidency and a man named Andy, which they have assumed means FBI Deputy Director Andrew McCabe.
Fox News reported:
“I want to believe the path you threw out for consideration in Andy’s office – that there’s no way he gets elected – but I’m afraid we can’t take that risk,” Strzok texted on Aug. 15, 2016. “It’s like an insurance policy in the unlikely event you die before you’re 40.”Some lawmakers surmise “Andy” is a reference to Andrew McCabe, and now want to know about his communications with Page and Strzok.“This [text] is the one that concerns me the most,” House Judiciary Committee Chairman Bob Goodlatte, R-Va., said on “Fox & Friends” Thursday, one day after Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein defended the Mueller probe in testimony before Goodlatte’s committee.“Andy is presumably Andrew McCabe … and this text is very troubling because it suggests that they’re doing something, they have a plan to take action to make sure that Donald Trump does not get elected president of the United States at the highest levels of the Federal Bureau of Investigation.”
Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Chuck Grassley has also raised concerns about the text:
“Some of these texts appear to go beyond merely expressing a private political opinion, and appear to cross the line into taking some official action to create an ‘insurance policy’ against a Trump presidency,” Grassley wrote Thursday. “Presumably, ‘Andy’ refers to Deputy FBI Director Andrew McCabe. So whatever was being discussed extended beyond just Page and Strzok at least to Mr. McCabe, who was involved in supervising both investigations.”
Grassley has requested that the DOJ turn over all documents and records related to that conversation along with “McCabe’s communications with Strzok and Page between Aug. 7 and Aug. 23, 2016” by December 27.
The DOJ wouldn’t comment on the text message, but said that Congress can interview Strzok.
But are these texts blown out of proportion? It’s quite possible. Seth Mandel, the op-ed editor at The New York Post, pointed out an explanation on Twitter that gives reasonable doubt that this is a whole bunch of nothing.
Journalist Del Quentin Wilbur unleashed a tweet storm that reminded people Strzok and Page didn’t like a lot of people, including Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT), former Attorney General Eric Holder, and Chelsea Clinton.
A readout on there texts showed Wilbur that Strzok and Page had a concern about competence.
Here’s the major point:
Look. These agents are human, not robots. They have opinions, emotions, thoughts, etc.
However, we cannot discount the texts between Strzok and Page that showed a bias to failed Democrat presidential candidate Hillary Clinton during the campaign. Kemberlee blogged about these texts after they became public and she included the details provided by The New York Times (emphasis mine):
Senior F.B.I. officials who helped investigate Donald J. Trump’s presidential campaign last year wrote in text messages that Hillary Clinton “just has to win” and described a potential Trump victory as “terrifying,” according to texts released Tuesday night.A top counterintelligence agent, Peter Strzok, exchanged the messages with Lisa Page, a senior F.B.I. lawyer. Some messages criticized Mrs. Clinton’s team, the Obama administration, Congress and other Democrats. But the two appeared appalled at some of Mr. Trump’s comments during the campaign and feared that he would politicize the F.B.I.For example, after Mr. Trump made an apparent sexual allusion related to the size of his hands, Ms. Page wrote: “This man cannot be president.” In another exchange, Mr. Strzok wrote of a potential Trump presidency, “I’m scared for our organization.” He also referred to Mr. Trump as a “douche.” The messages were turned over to Congress and obtained by The New York Times.
Page texted to Strzok on July 27: “She just has to win now. I’m not going to lie, I got a flash of nervousness yesterday about Trump.” A few weeks before that tweet the FBI closed its investigation into Hillary’s private email server. Just a few days after she sent that text, the FBI began its investigation into possible collusion between then-candidate Trump and Russia.
As The Wall Street Journal‘s editorial board wrote, the texts “suggest that some FBI officials may have gone beyond antipathy to anti-Trump plotting.” The board also stresses that this is just the latest development that should trouble anyone about Mueller’s investigation, especially since the DOJ and FBI have shown reluctance to cooperate with Congress:
Public confidence isn’t helped by the continuing Justice and FBI refusal to cooperate with Congress. Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein, who supervises Mr. Mueller, toed the Mueller-FBI line on Wednesday before the House Oversight Committee. He repeated FBI Director Christopher Wray’s preposterous excuse that he can’t answer questions because of an Inspector General probe. And he wouldn’t elaborate on the news that Nellie Ohr, the wife of senior Justice official Bruce Ohr, worked for Fusion GPS, which hired Mr. Steele to gin up his dossier.The man who should be most disturbed by all this is Mr. Mueller, who wants his evidence and conclusions to be credible with the public. Evidence is building instead that some officials at the FBI—who have worked for him—may have interfered in an American presidential election. Congress needs to insist on its rights as a co-equal branch of government to discover the truth.
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