U.S. Department of Justice/Ohio State University Peter Strzok and Lisa Page.
Former Robert Mueller investigative team member Peter Strzok called then presidential candidate Donald Trump an “idiot” and “awful” and wrote that Hillary Clinton “should win 100,000,000 – 0” in text messages to an FBI lawyer, Lisa Page, with whom he was allegedly having an affair.
Numerous news outlets obtained the electronic communications on December 12 after the Justice Department turned them over to Congress.
One of the texts from Lisa Page to FBI agent Peter Strzok discussed “preparing talking points for then-FBI Director James Comey to give to President Obama, who wanted ‘to know everything we’re doing,'” according to Fox News. “…the message more likely indicated that Obama wanted to be kept informed of an investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 election,” CNN reported, not the Clinton email probe.
The Washington Post reported on June 14, 2018 that the Inspector General’s reprot reveals Strzok allegedly told Page that Trump’s election would be stopped.
“[Trump’s] not ever going to become president, right? Right?!” the lawyer, Lisa Page, wrote to Strzok, according to The Post.
“No. No he won’t. We’ll stop it,” Strzok responded, The Post says the IG report reveals. The text was sent in August 2016 only a few months before the presidential election, and after the FBI had started its investigation into Trump campaign aides, according to The Post.
It was revealed in January 2018 that the FBI “failed to preserve” months of texts between Strzok and Page, according to The Daily Caller. “The disclosure was made Friday in a letter sent by the Justice Department to the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee (HSGAC),” reported The Daily Caller, which said five months worth of communications were not saved.
Attorney General Jeff Sessions revealed on January 22 that the pair exchanged 50,000 texts. “We will leave no stone unturned to confirm with certainty why these text messages are not now available to be produced and will use every technology available to determine whether the missing messages are recoverable from another source,” Sessions told Fox News. “If we are successful, we will update the congressional committees immediately.” Fox noted that the missing texts “span a crucial window, between the presidential transition and the launch of Robert Mueller’s Russia probe — where both officials previously were assigned” and run from December 14 to May 17, 2017.
“God Hillary should win 100,000,000 – 0,” Strzok wrote to Page, according to one message obtained by Politico. “Also did you hear [Trump] make a comment about the size of his d*ck earlier? This man can not be president,” Page responded, Politico reported.
The text message release promises to further enrage Republicans and Donald Trump supporters already criticizing the Mueller probe for alleged political bias, especially as Strzok, an FBI agent, figured into numerous high-profile politicized investigations: The Mueller probe but also the investigation into Hillary Clinton’s emails, for which she never faced criminal charges.
CBS News, which also obtained the emails, wrote that Strzok, on election day, “expressed his dismay at seeing a map showing…Trump winning — he called it ‘f*****g terrifying,’ and a week after the election, Strzok and Page were also alarmed to see that Jeff Sessions was likely to be named attorney general,” with Strzok writing “Sessions for AG” along with an expletive, to which Page replied, “Good god.”
Page and Strzok also wrote disparaging messages about Republican House Speaker Paul Ryan, “with Page expressing the hope that he ‘fails and crashes in a blaze of glory,'” reported CBS.
Politico recounted this exchange, reporting that the messages “show Page and Strzok mocking Trump as early as December 2015”:
“Responding to a Washington Post story in 2015 about Trump saying it hadn’t been proven that Russian President Vladimir Putin had killed anyone, Page wrote: ‘What an utter idiot.'”
In March 2016, Page wrote: “God trump is a loathsome human….omg he’s an idiot.”
“He’s awful,” Strzok replied.
GettyDonald Trump and Hillary Clinton arrive for the first presidential debate at Hofstra University in Hempstead, New York on September 26, 2016.
According to USA Today, Strzok referred to Trump as an “idiot” before the election. The newspaper also reported that Strzok wrote that The Republican Party “needs to pull their head out of their ass.”
According to Fox News, more texts were revealed in January 2018. “Page warned Strzok that Clinton ‘might be our next president,’ in a Feb. 25, 2016 message, continuing, “The last thing you need [is] going in there loaded for bear. You think she’s going to remember or care that it was more [DOJ] than [FBI]?”
According to USA Today, “The disclosure of 375 text message communications between Strzok and FBI colleague Lisa Page not only included disparaging references to Trump but also slammed former Democratic candidates Bernie Sanders and Martin O’Malley – and pondered the sexual preference of Republican Ohio Gov. John Kasich.” USA Today wrote that it obtained communications from Aug. 16, 2015 to Dec. 1, 2016.
The FBI initially said it couldn’t recover thousands of Page/Strzok texts, but the DOJ now says it has recovered those and will start releasing more of them.
Politico also obtained the messages, and reported that one exchange unfolded this way:
“I just saw my first Bernie Sanders bumper sticker. Made me want to key the car,” Page wrote in August 2015.
“He’s an idiot like Trump. Figure they cancel each other out,” Strzok replied.
Politico recounted another exchange this way from March 2016:
Page: “God trump is a loathsome human….omg he’s an idiot.”
“He’s awful,” Strzok replied.
USA Today recounted another exchange:
“America will get what the voting public deserves,” Strzok said last March.
“That’s what I’m afraid of,” Page replies.
It was previously reported that Strzok, an FBI agent, was removed from the Mueller team and reassigned after texts came to light between Strzok and Page that were characterized as against President Donald Trump and in support of Hillary Clinton. However, the actual wording was not released until December 12. Of course, Robert Mueller and his team are investigating Trump’s campaign for potential Russian collusion in the 2016 presidential election (and have lodged a series of charges against former Trump underlings on accusations involving finances and allegedly lying to the FBI.)
GettyRobert S. Mueller III.
The claims of political bias exploded after it was revealed that Mueller had quietly reassigned Strzok because of the text messages. Strzok is married to a top SEC lawyer named Melissa Hodgman.
“Bosses discovered he and another member of Mueller’s team had exchanged politically charged texts disparaging President Trump and supporting Hillary Clinton,” The Washington Post reported. According to The Washington Post, during the Clinton investigation, “Strzok was involved in a romantic relationship with FBI lawyer Lisa Page, who worked for Deputy Director Andrew McCabe.” McCabe himself has been criticized because his wife received money from groups with alliances to Clinton.
According to Newsweek, “It’s true that for her campaign, Jill McCabe received a total of $675,288 from two entities associated with McAuliffe: a political action committee and the Virginia Democratic Party.” She was running for Virginia’s senate at the time. “McAuliffe is a longtime friend of Hillary and Bill Clinton,” reported Newsweek.
Strzok’s exchange of messages with Page helped lead to his ouster from the Mueller team, the Post reported. “Of greater concern among senior law enforcement officials were text messages the two exchanged during the Clinton investigation and campaign season in which they expressed anti-Trump sentiments and other comments that appeared to favor Clinton,” according to the newspaper.
The allegations of political bias engulfing Strzok are not the only such claims to hit the Mueller team. At least nine of the lawyers on special prosecutor Robert Mueller’s Russia investigation team of 16 attorneys donated to Democrats, with most giving money to either the campaigns of Barack Obama or Hillary Clinton, a review of Federal Election Commission records shows.
Seven other lawyers on the team do not have previous federal campaign donations, a review of FEC records shows, and Mueller himself has served in the administrations of both Republican and Democratic presidents (and was a registered Republican in the past). None of the 16 lawyers on his team is listed as donating money to President Donald Trump’s campaign or to the presidential campaigns of any past Republicans, although one donated to two Republicans in non-presidential races in addition to giving more money to Hillary Clinton, Barack Obama, and a string of Democrats.
In other controversy to hit Justice, Bruce Ohr, an associate attorney general with the U.S. Department of Justice, was demoted in December 2017 because of contacts he allegedly had with the controversial Fusion GPS firm that hired the former British spy who developed the infamous “Trump dossier” on Russia. His wife, Nellie Ohr, has now become part of the controversy.
Fusion GPS, a firm of former journalists, has been embroiled in national controversy since it emerged that the opposition research company hired Christopher Steele, the former spy who produced the dossier of salacious and unverified allegations about Trump. It was later revealed that Fusion GPS’ dossier funding came, in part, from Hillary Clinton’s campaign and the Democratic National Committee. Trump has denied the allegations. According to Fox News, it’s now been revealed that Bruce Ohr’s wife, Nellie Ohr, “worked for Fusion GPS during the 2016 election.” She has written on Russian-related subjects, according to Fox.
You can read more about the Mueller team’s campaign donations here:
You can read more about Melissa Hodgman, Peter Strzok’s wife, here:
