Most media coverage of the newly-released transcript of Lisa Page’s testimony before the House Judiciary Committee focuses on questions that have long since been answered: We already knew there was bias against Donald Trump throughout the DOJ and FBI. It was long ago established that they never possessed any credible evidence of collusion involving Trump’s campaign and Russia. We already knew the investigation into Hillary Clinton’s crimes was a charade. The real news is how fearful the denizens of the DOJ and FBI were of incurring Clinton’s wrath: This is captured in the following warning from Page to Peter Strzok:
One more thing: She might be our next President. The last thing you need is us going in there [to Clinton’s interview] loaded for bear. You think she’s going to remember or care that it was more DOJ than FBI?
This warning was included in a text she sent Strzok in February of 2016, and its meaning is not difficult to decode. Page was clearly worried about the unhappy fate that inevitably befalls anyone who crosses Hillary Clinton — Rep. Trey Gowdy (R-SC) verified that the “she” referred to in the text was indeed Clinton. She obviously knows the mere fact that it is the FBI’s job to investigate such cases will carry zero weight when Her Majesty glares balefully around the Cabinet Room and demands to know, “Who will rid me of these turbulent G-Men?” Page also understands that her own loathing for Donald Trump won’t save her.
If there is anyone in the galaxy who has forgotten, Page is the FBI attorney who was recruited by Robert Mueller to work on his interminable Russia investigation and exchanged countless anti-Trump texts with another member of the Mueller team, FBI official Peter Strzok, with whom she also conducted an extramarital affair. Typical of the electronic missives that passed between these characters is an exchange that occurred during August of 2016 in which Page frantically texted, “[Trump’s] not ever going to become president, right? Right?!” Anxious to sooth his paramour, Strzok responded, “No. No he won’t. We’ll stop it.”
It isn’t clear how Strzok planned to accomplish that dubious goal, but he was obviously unsuccessful. Both he and Page were eventually removed from the Mueller probe, and she subsequently resigned from the FBI. Strzok was later fired. However, because both were so obviously biased against Trump and worked on the phony FBI investigation into Clinton’s missing emails as well as Mueller’s evidence-free investigation into Russia collusion by the Trump presidential campaign, Congress inevitably asked each to visit Capitol Hill in an effort to find out exactly what the hell was going at the DOJ and FBI.
The Strzok hearing was an exercise in bureaucratic arrogance that convinced many who watched it that he was not merely dishonest but seriously creepy. Indeed, it was such a freak show that the House Judiciary Committee decided to conduct closed door hearings with Page. Her two days of hearing are the source of the transcript that was released to the public Tuesday by Rep. Doug Collins (R-GA), the Ranking Member of the Judiciary Committee. Collins said he decided to release the transcripts of Page’s hearings because he believes that there has been a double standard of justice applied to Mrs. Clinton and President Trump:
The president has been unfairly attacked from the moment he was elected in November 2016 on many fronts and now we’re beginning just to see the vast scope of what most of us knew, that Mrs. Clinton was treated completely differently than what we ended up seeing Trump being treated, and that’s just wrong… this just shows that there is a two-tiered system.
It isn’t hard to see why. First, erstwhile President Obama politicized the DOJ by turning it over to operatives like Loretta Lynch. Lynch served as the AG during the phony Clinton investigation and, in June of 2016, she met with former President Bill Clinton on board a parked plane at an Arizona airport a few days before Mrs. Clinton was interviewed by the FBI about her email server. According to Page’s testimony, the DOJ then insisted that Clinton’s interview be conducted in a highly unorthodox fashion. Next they ordered the FBI not to charge her. Rep. John Ratcliffe (R-TX) tweeted that part of Page’s testimony:
This brings us back to the discussion Bill Clinton had with Loretta Lynch on that Phoenix tarmac. Lynch claimed, “Our conversation was a great deal about grandchildren, it was primarily social.… There was no discussion on any matter pending before the Department … no discussion of State Department emails.” It’s passing strange that this “spontaneous” meeting took place 5 days before Hillary’s FBI interview, yet nothing was said about a ticking time bomb that was about to blow her credibility to rags. Or maybe Bill’s comment about Lynch’s grandchildren was something like, “I’d hate to see anything happen to them.”
The rest, to coin a phrase, is history. Both Page and Strzok joined the Mueller investigation into collusion between Russia and the Trump campaign. Strzok soon indicated in a text to Page that he suspected “there was no big there there regarding any collusion with Trump” yet they both wanted to be part of the Mueller probe. So, if they had been bullied by...
Mr. Ratcliffe: Okay. So let me if I can, I know I’m testing your memory, but when you say advice you got from the Department [of Justice], you’re making it sound like it was the Department that told you: “You’re not going to charge gross negligence because we’re the prosecutors and we’re telling you we’re not going to.”
Ms. Page: That’s correct
This brings us back to the discussion Bill Clinton had with Loretta Lynch on that Phoenix tarmac. Lynch claimed, “Our conversation was a great deal about grandchildren, it was primarily social.… There was no discussion on any matter pending before the Department … no discussion of State Department emails.” It’s passing strange that this “spontaneous” meeting took place 5 days before Hillary’s FBI interview, yet nothing was said about a ticking time bomb that was about to blow her credibility to rags. Or maybe Bill’s comment about Lynch’s grandchildren was something like, “I’d hate to see anything happen to them.”
The rest, to coin a phrase, is history. Both Page and Strzok joined the Mueller investigation into collusion between Russia and the Trump campaign. Strzok soon indicated in a text to Page that he suspected “there was no big there there regarding any collusion with Trump” yet they both wanted to be part of the Mueller probe. So, if they had been bullied by...
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