FBI Texts: Trump Investigator Wanted Ways to Get Around Text Message Monitoring
Newly published text messages between top FBI counterintelligence agent Peter Strzok and FBI attorney Lisa Page show that the two sought to “get around” an agency rule that required their correspondence be monitored for security reasons.
Released Thursday by the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee, the newly published text messages began with Page informing Strzok that she was about to receive a new Apple iPhone from James Turgal, who at the the time served as the executive assistant director of the FBI’s Investigation Information and Technology Branch.
“Hot damn. I’m happy to pilot that…we get around our security/monitoring issues?” Strzok replied.
“No, he’s proposing that we just stop following them,” Page responded. “Apparently the requirement to capture texts came from omb, but we’re the only org (I’m told) who is following that rule. His point is, if no one else is doing it why should we.”
The Washington Examiner notes that the latter statement — that the FBI was “the only org … following” the monitoring rule — suggests “ignoring the archiving rules was widely accepted throughout the Obama government.”
Over at The Hill, veteran journalist Sharyl Attkisson likewise pointed out that this behavior fits an established pattern.
“In the past two decades … there’s evidence that federal officials have consciously devised ways to thwart public records laws and keep their communications — our records — secret,” she wrote. “Federal officials have used private email accounts, private servers and aliases (not their own name) for public business. They have deleted or lost messages that are supposed to be saved.”
Former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s reckless use of a private email account on personal server to transmit classified information exemplifies this to a T, as does Strzok and Page’s alarming exchange.
We now know that Page and Strzok previously served on special counsel Robert Mueller’s Russia probe up until the summer, when Mueller reportedly became aware that the two had exchanged pro-Hillary and anti-Trump text messages during the 2016 presidential election.
Though Mueller promptly removed the two from his team, news of their removal did not reach Congress until December, which raised question’s about his credibility.
“The texts explain why Mr. Mueller would remove Mr. Strzok, though a straight shooter wouldn’t typically resist turning those messages over to Congress for as long as Mr. Mueller did,” the editorial board of the The Wall Street Journal pointed out two months ago.
Congressional committees have since determinedly tried to obtain all of Strzok and Page’s text messages so as to inspect them and root out any potential violations of the law.
Republicans are especially concerned that Strzok’s biases and willingness to flagrantly violate basic rules and regulations may have affected the agency’s former investigation into Clinton’s use of a personal server, which he reportedly led — and which the FBI eventually closed on the dubious basis that there was no malicious intent behind the former secretary of state’s reckless behavior.
Regarding the latest set of text messages between Strzok and Page, Attkisson opined that “(t)his sort of toying with public records is, in my view, one of the worst modern violations of the public trust by our government.”
But she noted that “there appears to be no serious effort to remedy it.”
True. And the reason for this lies with both the Democrats and their liberal media allies’ refusal to even admit that what Strzok and Page did was wrong. In their minds, anyone who even broaches this subject lives on “another planet.”
My rebuttal would be that those who deny this clear-cut corruption don’t just live on another planet; they live in another universe.
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