While the media speculates that the text from FBI lawyer Lisa Page about a “secret society” was made in jest, it still doesn’t absolve her or FBI agent Peter Strzok for their unprofessional and unethical behavior. Both were involved in high-level investigations, Page and Strzok were part of the DOJ’s Russia probe headed by Special Counsel Robert Mueller. Strzok was also involved in the Hillary Clinton email investigation. He also signed off on the FBI’s counterintelligence investigation into whether there was collusion between the Trump campaign and the Russians during the 2016 election; the investigation now helmed by Mueller. Strzok was also having an extramarital affair with Page, which added to the unprofessionalism. These investigations were supposed to have been conducted without a scintilla of bias or impropriety. Instead, what we got was a recipe for blackmail; Strzok was a top counterintelligence agent before Mueller found out about these texts, which were riddled with anti-Trump swipes; Mueller then booted Strzok from the Russia investigation. He was reassigned to human resources.
FBI officials Peter Strzok and Lisa Page were concerned about being too tough on Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton during the bureau’s investigation into her email practices because she might hold it against them as president, text messages released on Thursday indicated.
Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Chuck Grassley released new messages between bureau officials Page and Strzok, who were having an affair and exchanged more than 50,000 texts with each other during the election.
“One more thing: she might be our next president,” Page texted Strzok on Feb. 25, 2016, in the midst of the presidential campaign, in reference to Clinton.
“The last thing you need [is] going in there loaded for bear,” she continued. “You think she’s going to remember or care that it was more [DOJ] than [FBI]?”
Strzok replied that he “agreed” and he had relayed their discussion with someone named “Bill.”
[…]
Grassley, an Iowa Republican, said Thursday in a letter to FBI Director Christopher Wray that the exchange, among others, concerned him.
“The text messages that were provided raise serious concerns about the impartiality of senior leadership running both the Clinton and Trump investigations,” Grassley said.
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So, this is what we can glean from that text: let's pull some punches because we really want this woman to be the president, she could assume that role soon, and we don’t want to be chewed out when she finds out we conducted an FBI investigation like any other.
There’s a cumulative effect building here. At the Department of Justice, Associate Deputy Attorney General Bruce Ohr met with the author of the Trump dossier and didn’t disclose it. He’s since been demoted. His wife, Nellie, worked for Fusion GPS, the research firm that hired ex-MI6 agent Christopher Steele to compile the now-infamous dossier on Trump, which turned out to be an opposition research project because this party was funded by the Hillary campaign. Questions abound, yes. We need answers, fellas. Who's watching the watchmen here?
Via NRO:
Everything that has happened in the Trump probe stands out against a backdrop of leniency in the Clinton investigation. While Mueller has prosecuted two Trump associates for lying to the FBI, the Obama Justice Department gave a pass to Mrs. Clinton and her subordinates, who gave the FBI misinformation about such key matters as whether Clinton understood markings in classified documents and whether her aides knew about her homebrew server system during their State Department service. Mueller’s team conducted a predawn raid at gunpoint in executing a search warrant on Paul Manafort’s home while Manafort was cooperating with congressional committees. When it came to the Clinton case, though, the Justice Department not only eschewed search warrants, or even mere subpoenas, but they never even took possession of the DNC server alleged to have been hacked by Russian operatives.
The irregularities in the Clinton-emails investigation are breathtaking: the failure to use the grand jury to compel the production of key physical evidence; the Justice Department’s collaboration with defense lawyers to restrict the FBI’s ability to pursue obvious lines of inquiry and examine digital evidence; immunity grants to suspects who should have been charged with crimes and pressured to cooperate; allowing subjects of the investigation to be present for each other’s FBI interviews and even to act as lawyers for Clinton, in violation of legal and ethical rules; Comey’s preparation of a statement exonerating Clinton months before the investigation was complete and key witnesses — including Clinton herself — were interviewed; and the shameful tarmac meeting between Obama attorney general Loretta Lynch and Mrs. Clinton’s husband just days before Mrs. Clinton sat for a perfunctory FBI interview (after which Comey announced the decision not to charge her).
Do we need another special counsel to look into how the FBI handled this email probe because that's not an illegitimate request.
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