Republican congressional investigators say it’s possible high-ranking officials in the U.S. government under the Obama administration and former Senate Democratic leadership coordinated together in the early days of the federal investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 election.
Newly discovered text messages exchanged between FBI officials Peter Strzok and Lisa Page “strongly suggest” that there was an effort of coordination, including members of the White House, CIA, FBI, and Justice Department, according to Fox News.
Names brought up in the report include former President Barack Obama’s chief of staff, Denis McDonough, former Senate Democratic Leader Harry Reid, and former CIA Director John Brennan.
The investigators argue this would “contradict” what the Obama administration has publicly maintained concerning their role in the investigation, which is seeking to determine if the Trump campaign colluded with the Kremlin during the 2016 election. However, they cautioned that they had not yet reached a conclusion and said they were only raising concern at the timeline of events.
“We are not making conclusions. What we are saying is that the timeline is concerning enough to warrant the appointment of an independent investigator to look at whether or not the Obama White House was involved [in the Trump-Russia investigation],” a GOP congressional source told Fox News.
Strzok was removed from special counsel Robert Muller’s team, which is leading the Russia probe, in August and moved to a human resources position after it was revealed he and Page exchanged text messages during the Hillary Clinton email investigation and 2016 campaign season, during which they expressed anti-Trump sentiments.
