Text messages made public Tuesday night expose the depth of anti-Trump bias in Mueller’s investigation into alleged collusion between the Trump campaign and Russia.
The texts produced were exchanged between Peter Strzok, a top intelligence official, and Lisa Page, an attorney for the FBI.
Both expressed concern over comments Trump made during the campaign and in one exchange Strzok said, “God Hillary should win 100,000,000 – 0”.
Strzok was removed from Mueller’s team when Mueller became aware of the text messages last summer.
The New York Times has more detail:
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.
According to the WSJ, “Federal law prohibits the Justice Department—which includes the special counsel’s office—from using political or ideological affiliations to assess applicants for career positions in the agency. Employees are also allowed to express opinions on political subjects privately and publicly, as long as they aren’t in concert with a political party or candidate for office.”
The NYT ctd:
On July 27, Ms. Page wrote, “She just has to win now. I’m not going to lie, I got a flash of nervousness yesterday about Trump.” That text message was sent after the Clinton investigation had been closed. Days later, the F.B.I. began investigating possible coordination between Russian officials and the Trump campaign.The two F.B.I. officials also criticized Mr. Trump as the Russia investigation was continuing. They told internal investigators that their comments were influenced by the troubling evidence they were seeing about Mr. Trump’s campaign ties to Russia, according to a person familiar with the internal investigation.F.B.I. officials who worked directly with Mr. Strzok on the Clinton and Trump investigations said they never detected any bias in his investigative work. The F.B.I. director, Christopher A. Wray, said last week at a congressional hearing that he could not discuss the texts because of the continuing investigation. But Mr. Wray said that he would “hold people accountable after there has been an appropriate investigation, independent and objective, by the inspector general into the handling of the prior matter.”The F.B.I. declined to comment. Mr. Strzok, a former Army officer, and Ms. Page, a prosecutor who started her government career right out of law school, are career officials, not political appointees.
Just last week it was revealed that another top investigator on Mueller’s team attended Hillary’s election-night party.
To his credit, Mueller reportedly removed Strzok from the investigation as soon as he was aware of the text messages.
As we’ve discussed before, it’s not impossible to be objective beyond political ideology, but the degree to which several members of Mueller’s team disliked Trump and clearly held loyalties to Hillary certainly taints the argument that Mueller’s Russian investigation remains focused and apolitical.
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