Page sues FBI, DOJ for releasing anti-Trump texts
WASHINGTON — Former FBI lawyer Lisa Page, a target of repeated attacks by President Donald Trump, sued the bureau and the Justice Department on Tuesday, saying officials unlawfully released a trove of politically charged text messages she exchanged with a senior FBI agent with whom she was having an affair.
Page accused the agencies of violating the Privacy Act by showing reporters a document containing nearly 400 texts between her and former senior FBI agent Peter Strzrok, in which the pair discussed their dislike of Trump and fear that he might win the presidency.
The messages, which came to light in December 2017, fueled claims that the FBI was prejudiced against Trump and became ammunition for scores of angry tweets and public statements by the president and his supporters.
Page’s lawsuit said the attention has “radically altered her day-to-day life.”
“The officials who authorized the disclosure and their allies sought to use, and ultimately did use, the messages to promote the false narrative that Plaintiff and others at the FBI were biased against President Trump, had conspired to undermine him, and otherwise had engaged in allegedly criminal acts, including treason,” Page’s complaint read.
A Justice Department representative declined to comment on the case.
The lawsuit comes as Page has for the first time publicly pushed back against the president’s broadsides after remaining quiet about the political firestorm that engulfed her roughly two years ago. Last week, she gave a wideranging interview with The Daily Beast in which she slammed Trump for his “sickening” attacks against her and said she wanted to “take my power back.”
Responding to the interview, Trump fired off a critical tweet referring to Page as “the lover of Peter Strzok.”
Page’s lawsuit was filed a day after the Justice Department’s inspector general released a report rebutting accusations that top FBI officials were driven by bias in their investigation of possible coordination between the Trump campaign and Russia in the 2016 election.
The lawsuit was filed in the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia.