FBI report: Anti-trump texts ’cast a cloud’ over email probe
WASHINGTON — As the FBI investigated both candidates running for president in 2016, two FBI employees exchanged thousands of personal texts and messages that included a running political commentary — including newly released messages in which one of them expressed a desire to “stop” the election of Donald Trump.
In a highly anticipated report released Thursday, the Justice Department’s internal watchdog said those messages sullied the FBI’S reputation and “cast a cloud” over its investigation into Democrat Hillary Clinton’s emails, even if they did not affect the investigation itself. The report, which faulted former FBI Director James Comey for his handling of the probe, also cited anti-trump communications sent by three other unnamed FBI employees.
The messages between FBI agent Peter Strzok and FBI lawyer Lisa Page — both of whom worked on special counsel Robert Mueller’s Russia probe — have also given Republicans ample fodder to criticize the Clinton investigation, which eventually cleared her, and to question the department’s ongoing probe into Russian election intervention and whether President Donald Trump’s Republican campaign was involved. That investigation, now led by Mueller, is also looking into whether Trump obstructed justice.
“Peter Strzok should not have a job anywhere near our Justice Department,” said North Carolina Rep. Mark Meadows, a Republican who is close to Trump, after a briefing on the report. The House Judiciary Committee said Thursday they would subpoena Strzok to testify.
Both Strzok and Page worked on the Clinton probe. Strzok was a respected, veteran counterintelligence agent who helped lead that investigation. Page, who has now left the agency, was less well-known.
The two also had roles on the Mueller investigation. Strzok was removed from the Russia probe in the summer of 2017 after the department found out about the texts. Page only briefly worked on Mueller’s team and left before the texts were discovered.
Texts between the two included their observations of the 2016 election and criticism of Trump. They used words like “idiot,” ‘’loathsome,” ‘’menace” and “disaster” to describe him. In one text four days before the election, Page told Strzok that the “American presidential election, and thus, the state of the world, actually hangs in the balance.”
Many of the texts had already been made public after the FBI sent them to Congress. But in a new, inflammatory text revealed in the report, Page wrote Strzok in August 2016: “(Trump’s) not ever going to become president, right? Right?!”