On Thursday night, Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-IA) released seven pages of texts between FBI counterintelligence agent Peter Strzock and his FBI paramour, Lisa Page. Those texts show that both Strzok and Page were interested in letting Hillary Clinton off the hook so as to earn the FBI goodwill with the presumed next president.
Page wrote to Strzok on February 25, 2016, “One more thing: she might be our next president. The last thing you need us going in there loaded for bear. You think she’s going to remember or care that it was more doj than fbi?” The obvious implication here is that Page wanted to go easy on Clinton in order to curry favor. Strzok wrote back, “Agreed. I called [FBI counterintelligence head] Bill [Priestap] and relayed what we discussed. He agrees. I will email you and [redacted] same.”
Another of the texts from Page to Strzok suggested that then-FBI chief of staff James Rybicki thought FBI Deputy Director Andrew McCabe should recuse himself from the Clinton matter because of his wife’s relationship with Virginia Governor Terry McAuliffe. She wrote, “Rybicki just called to check in. He very clearly 100% believes that Andy should be recused because of the ‘perception.’”
Grassley states in a letter to FBI Director Christopher Wray, “In October 2015, then-Director Comey said, ‘If you know my folks…they don’t give a rip about politics.’…They cared very much about politics, to the detriment of the Bureau’s mission and objectivity.”
All of this is damning stuff. It explains just why Republicans are so deeply skeptical of the FBI’s investigation, not merely into Hillary Clinton, but into supposed Trump-Russia collusion. The Hillary Clinton investigation was clearly politicized, and both Strzock and Page were involved in the Trump investigation as well. No wonder trust in the FBI seems to be collapsing among Republicans.