FBI Couldn’t Find Trump-Russia Collusion, and Neither Could Bob Woodward

FBI Couldn’t Find Trump-Russia Collusion, and Neither Could Bob Woodward

Buried amid all the anti-Trump “Russia, Russia, Russia” derangement are a couple of potentially explosive revelations.

Lisa Page, former FBI lawyer and mistress of former FBI agent Peter Strzok, admitted that the FBI couldn’t prove collusion between the Trump campaign and Russia at the time Robert Mueller took over the investigation, and Bob Woodward admits that after searching “hard” for two years, he found no evidence of collusion, either.

In response to questioning during a congressional interview, Page told Representative John Ratcliffe (R-TX) that as of May, 2017, the FBI had found no connection between Trump and Russia that pointed to collusion.

John Solomon writing for the Hill reports:

To date, Lisa Page’s infamy has been driven mostly by the anti-Donald Trump text messages she exchanged with fellow FBI agent Peter Strzok as the two engaged in an affair while investigating the president for alleged election collusion with Russia.

. . . . “It’s a reflection of us still not knowing,” Page told Rep. John Ratcliffe (R-Texas) when questioned about texts she and Strzok exchanged in May 2017 as Robert Mueller was being named a special prosecutor to take over the Russia investigation.

With that statement, Page acknowledged a momentous fact: After nine months of using some of the most awesome surveillance powers afforded to U.S. intelligence, the FBI still had not made a case connecting Trump or his campaign to Russia’s election meddling.

Page opined further, acknowledging “it still existed in the scope of possibility that there would be literally nothing” to connect Trump and Russia, no matter what Mueller or the FBI did.

“As far as May of 2017, we still couldn’t answer the question,” she said at another point.

Considering that Page was lead on the FBI’s Russia case in 2016 and helped with the transition to Mueller, this is a rather significant admission.

Solomon continues:

It might take a few seconds for the enormity of Page’s statements to sink in. After all, she isn’t just any FBI lawyer. She was a lead on the Russia case when it started in summer 2016, and she helped it transition to Mueller through summer 2017.

For those who might cast doubt on the word of a single FBI lawyer, there’s more.

Shortly after he was fired, ex-FBI Director James Comey told the Senate there was not yet evidence to justify investigating Trump for colluding with Russia. “When I left, we did not have an investigation focused on President Trump,” Comey testified.

And Strzok, the counterintelligence boss and leader of the Russia probe, texted Page in May 2017 that he was reluctant to join Mueller’s probe and leave his senior FBI post because he feared “there’s no big there, there.”

The Department of Justice (DOJ) inspector general asked Strzok shortly before he was fired from the FBI what he meant by that text, and he offered a most insightful answer.

Strzok said he wasn’t certain there was a “broad, coordinated effort” to hijack the election and that the evidence of Trump campaign aides talking about getting Hillary Clinton dirt from Russians might have been just a “bunch of opportunists” talking to heighten their importance.

. . . . So, by the words of Comey, Strzok and Page, we now know that the Trump Justice Department — through Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein — unleashed the Mueller special prosecutor probe before the FBI could validate a connection between Trump and Russia.

Which raises the question: If there was no concrete evidence of collusion, why did we need a special prosecutor?

Page’s comments also mean FBI and Justice officials likely leaked a barrage of media stories just before and after Mueller’s appointment that made the evidence of collusion look far stronger than the frontline investigators knew it to be. Text messages show contacts between key FBI and DOJ players and the Washington Post, the Associated Press and the New York Times during the ramp-up to Mueller’s probe.

Ultimately, as Solomon concludes, “[n]o matter where Mueller ends his probe, it is now clear the actions that preceded his appointment turned justice on its head, imposing the presumption of guilt upon a probe whose own originators had reason to doubt the strength of their evidence.”

Read the whole thing.

It’s not just Page dropping this bombshell about the FBI being unable to unearth any evidence of collusion.  Veteran investigative journalist Bob Woodward told Hugh Hewitt that during the two years he spent researching his recent book, he looked “hard” for evidence of collusion and found none.

Real Clear Politics reports:

In an interview with Hugh Hewitt on Friday, Bob Woodward said that in his two years of investigating for his new book, ‘Fear,’ he found no evidence of collusion or espionage between Trump and Russia. Woodward said he looked for it “hard” and yet turned up nothing.

“So let’s set aside the Comey firing, which as a Constitutional law professor, no one will ever persuade me can be obstruction. And Rod Rosenstein has laid out reasons why even if those weren’t the president’s reasons. Set aside the Comey firing. Did you, Bob Woodward, hear anything in your research in your interviews that sounded like espionage or collusion?” Hugh Hewitt asked Woodward.

“I did not, and of course, I looked for it, looked for it hard,” Woodward answered. “And so you know, there we are. We’re going to see what Mueller has, and Dowd may be right. He has something that Dowd and the president don’t know about, a secret witness or somebody who has changed their testimony. As you know, that often happens, and that can break open or turn a case.”

“But you’ve seen no collusion?” Hewitt asked again to confirm.

“I have not,” Woodward affirmed.

The prof wrote in April:

This is an all-out assault on Trump and the election result.

It’s no longer about Russian collusion, if it ever was.

It’s becoming increasingly clear that he was right on both counts and that it never was about Russian collusion.

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