The FBI could do itself a lot of good if it were lucid with congressional committees seeking answers about Fusion GPS, the Trump dossier and text messages between FBI agent Peter Strzok and bureau attorney Lisa Page. But it’s not happening. So, as the FBI’s attention turns to the Strzok-Page interactions, let’s review another area Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-IA) wants clarification on: whether they used private devices to communicate during the investigation into Hillary Clinton’s emails.
The two had an extramarital affair, sending about 50,000 text messages. They were clearly anti-Trump and pro-Hillary. They really, really wanted the former secretary of state to be the next president. That bias is bad enough. Then the “insurance policy” text that Strzok mentioned in an Aug. 15, 2016, text after a meeting with deputy director Andrew McCabe, which some say is a reference to the Trump dossier. On Thursday, text messages between Strzok and Page showed that they discussed possibly dialing back some of the blows in the Hillary email investigation because they were concerned that they were being too tough on the former first lady. Hillary Clinton conducted all of her official State Department business on a private, unsecured, unauthorized email server while serving as our top diplomat in the Obama administration. There were concerns that she mishandled classified information.
Senator Grassley, the chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, wants answers from FBI Director Chris Wray on the issue of communications via private devices, including (via Fox News)[emphasis mine]:
FBI agents Peter Strzok and Lisa Page may have used private accounts to send each other official documents related to the 2016 Hillary Clinton email investigation while the bureau was investigating ‘similar’ practices– said Chuck Grassley, chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee.
“It appears that Strzok and Page have turned over federal documents relating to the Clinton investigation into private non-governmental services,” the Iowa Republican wrote in a letter to FBI Director Chris Wray on Thursday.
He asked if that affected how the office approached the Clinton case.
“It is critical to determine whether similar conduct was a factor that prevented the focus on and evidence of similar violations by Secretary Clinton and her aides.“Grassley said.
[…]
Grassley wrote in the letter to Wray that Strzok and Page also referred in some of the texts to “related conversations they had via iMessage, likely on their personal Apple devices.”
“Did the FBI ask Mr. Strzok or Ms. Page to voluntarily provide information from their personal accounts?” Grassley asked Wray. “If so, were they cooperative? If the FBI did not ask, please explain why.”
The GOP senator also asked: “Did the FBI conduct any voluntary searches of Strzok’s or Page’s non-law enforcement phones and email accounts to determine whether federal records existed?”
[…]
Now we know there was a set-up, and I think it stands to reason that if there was a set-up in the Clinton investigation, and the same people — top people at the FBI — started and ran the Trump and Russia investigation, could there be bad things going on there as well?” Rep. Jim Jordan, R-Ohio, said Friday on “Fox & Friends.” “And when you look at those text messages, that’s certainly what’s going on.”
So let’s go back to Kimberley Strassel with Wall Street Journal who wrote before Christmas that the FBI was abusing its secrecy powers to avoid embarrassment. That embarrassment initially came in overtly anti-Trump texts sent by their top counterintelligence officer, Strzok, who was involved in both the Clinton email and the Trump-Russia investigations. It undermined the credibility of the investigations. Moreover, Strzok and Page’s trysts also demonstrated a lack of professionalism among the staff on these matters. The Justice Department hid the anti-Trump text exchanges between them under the bed for months before they became public, and Strzok, who was fired from his position on the Russia investigation when special counsel Robert Mueller learned of the texts, was transferred to human resources last August.
Is this another example of the FBI stalling to avoid embarrassment? Two officials are using personal devices while investigating one of the country’s most powerful politicians and a top presidential candidate… who used personal devices and an email server, while saying they should back off a bit. It’s a snapshot of how the FBI has conducted its email and Russia investigations — and it’s a pretty stark difference between the two (via NRO):
Everything that happened in the Trump investigation stands out against the leniency in the Clinton investigation. While Mueller charged two Trump aides with lying to the FBI, the Obama Justice Department gave a free pass to Clinton and her subordinates who misrepresented key issues, such as whether Clinton understood the markings on classified documents and whether her aides knew about her home server system while she was at the State Department. Mueller’s team carried out a predawn raid at gunpoint, executing a search warrant at Paul Manafort’s home while Manafort was cooperating with congressional committees. But in the Clinton case, the Justice Department not only evaded search warrants and even subpoenas, it never seized the DNC server, which had allegedly been hacked by Russian agents.
The irregularities in the Clinton email investigation are staggering: the failure to employ a grand jury to compel the production of key physical evidence; the collusion of the Justice Department with defense lawyers to limit the FBI’s ability to pursue obvious lines of inquiry and examine digital evidence; granting immunity to suspects who should have been charged with crimes and compelled to cooperate; allowing subjects of the investigation to attend FBI interviews and even act as Clinton’s lawyers, in violation of legal and ethical rules; Comey preparing a statement exonerating Clinton months before the investigation was complete and key witnesses — including Clinton herself — had been interviewed; and the infamous airport tarmac meeting between Obama Attorney General Loretta Lynch and Mrs. Clinton’s husband just days before Mrs. Clinton had a cursory interview with the FBI (after which Comey announced his decision not to prosecute her).
The FBI is under scrutiny and is expected to remain there for some time.
