Sex and politics: ‘ FBI lovers’ in Trump’s sights

Like any caring lover, Peter Strzok was there with reassurances when girlfriend Lisa Page confessed deep fears about the future under a Donald Trump presidency in a late- night text message in August 2016.

“He’s not ever going to become president, right? Right?!” Page wrote.

“No. No he won’t. We’ll stop it,” Strzok replied. But, as Federal Bureau of Investigation agents, the two weren’t just any lovers.

That exchange is now the focus of a Republican campaign to discredit the FBI and Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s Russia investigation that threatens Trump.

Both appear this week before Congressional panels where Republicans aim to show that their political biases distorted the two most sensitive Justice Department probes in the past three years: into Democrat Hillary Clinton’s mishandling of classified documents, and into alleged collusion between Trump’s 2016 election campaign and the Russians.

If they can demonstrate the investigators themselves were deeply prejudiced against Trump, Republicans hope they can quash obstruction allegations against the president and a potential impeachment move.

Strzok was already hauled before a joint hearing of the House Oversight and Judiciary Committees two weeks ago for an 11- hour closed- door grilling.

This week he appears in an open session of the same two committees on Thursday, while Page was subpoenaed to appear before them in a closed session on Wednesday.

Strzok, a veteran FBI counterintelligence officer, exchanged tens of thousands of text messages with bureau lawyer Page during their extramarital affair between 2015 and 2017.

That period overlapped with their involvement in both the Clinton and Trump investigations.

With any lurid and intimate communications deleted, the messages are a blend of office gossip, worries about press reports and leaks, and political rants in which Trump, during the 2016 campaign, is called “loathsome” and a “menace” — alongside more vulgar slurs. During one campaign debate Strzok texted that Trump was an “idiot.”

“Putin is on Trump’s team,” he said at another point, referring to the Russian president.

In August 2016 an admiring Page tells Strzok: “Maybe you’re meant to stay where you are because you’re meant to protect the country from that menace.” When Trump defeats Clinton in the November 8 election, both are deeply upset. Strzok laments, “OMG I am so depressed.”

“I don’t know if I can eat. I am very nauseous,” Page replies.

Republicans say the messages are clear evidence of FBI bias. Beginning late last year, Trump has focused his counterattack against Mueller and the bureau on “the incompetent & corrupt FBI lovers.”

“Public opinion has turned strongly against the Rigged Witch Hunt and the ‘ Special’ Counsel because the public understands that there was no Collusion with Russia ( so ridiculous), that the two FBI lovers were a fraud against our Nation & that the only Collusion was with the Dems!” Trump tweeted on Saturday.

“The Rigged Witch Hunt, originally headed by FBI lover boy Peter S,” Trump wrote, “is a Democratic Con Job!”