At the end of May, Rep. Adam Schiff penned a weepy mash note to Washington’s G-Men: “An Open Letter to the Federal Bureau of Investigation.” The California Democrat bemoaned that “In recent weeks the FBI has come under unprecedented and unjustified criticism.” After attempting to dispel the accusations levied by congressional Republicans and administration officials that he viewed as “casting a shadow on the origins of the counterintelligence investigation,”Schiff made an unqualified endorsement of the bureau: “I have seen no evidence that the FBI did anything but act professionally and appropriately.” Schiff said that Republicans, by contrast, are doing “lasting damage to the FBI’s ability to keep the country safe.”
But it would seem that congressional love for the FBI is unrequited. At least that’s the takeaway from reading the texts between FBI employees Lisa Page and Peter Strzok. They don’t just disdain Congress, they despise it. Is their attitude common in the bureau? It’s unlikely Page and Strzok were radical outliers. Both rose to senior positions of authority. Both were trusted with roles in the most sensitive and consequential investigations in recent times—the Hillary Clinton classified email case, the secret counterintelligence inquiry into team Trump, and Robert Mueller’s special counsel investigation. Having been two of the most important players in the bureau, their approach to their work can be assumed to reflect the culture of the organization.
Take their conversation of June 18, 2016: Page and Strzok were texting one another, talking about how to get info out of a target who had lawyered up. Page suggested that, though an assistant U.S. attorney would not be able to approach the target for information without his counsel present, “I thought a source still could.” But no, they realize they’re restricted by a federal ethics law, the McDade Amendment, which requires federal prosecutors to abide by the legal rules of the jurisdictions they are working in—which in this case meant they were prohibited from making the sneaky end-around of sending a secret “source” to pump their target for incriminating evidence. Page griped about the ethics rule: “It didn’t apply to us, until dumas congress passed mcdade.”
It’s telling—and disconcerting—that FBI officials get their backs up when required to abide by basic standards of legal ethics.
A few days later, the topic of Congress came up between the two again: The FBI pals weren’t just critical, they were downright hostile. After an afternoon on Capitol Hill, Page texted Strzok: “Hi. Just leaving my meeting now. How we make law in this country is offensive and irresponsible.” She added an angry-pouty-face emoji.
“I know it is.” Strzok responded. “Its why i LOATHE congress.”
In the aftermath of then-FBI head James Comey’s strange Clinton exoneration press conference July 5, 2016, the director went before the House Oversight Committee. Lawmakers were asking what gives. Page and Strzok rallied around their boss via text.
“God [Comey] is SO GOOD” Strzok enthused.
“I know. Brilliant public speaker. And brilliant distillation of fact,” said Page.
“Yep,” Strzok wrote, adding that he thought committee chairman “[Jason] Chaffetz is in over his head.”
“I was about to say the same thing. And chaffetz is trying to be so measured. But it’s so phony.”
They also commented on lawmakers in general:
“God I hate Congress.” Page wrote. “So utterly worthless.”
“Less than worthless,” pronounced Strzok. “Contemptible.”
“That’s exactly right,” said Page.
About a week after Comey’s press conference, Strzok wrote to Page that he was “Worried about work.” He was worried about “How much we decide to release, the prospect of second guessing.” It’s one thing if the second-guessing came from DoJ’s inspector general, but Strzok wasn’t about to be overseen by lawmakers: “The IG doing that bugs me;” Strzok texted, “Congress doing so infuriates me.”
He was doubly worried because, that day, Chaffetz and House Judiciary Committee Chairman Bob Goodlatte had sent a criminal referral to the U.S. Attorney for the District of Columbia asking that Hillary Clinton be investigated, and perhaps prosecuted, for perjury. For Strzok, the referral was yet another reason to withhold information requested by Congress: “You read the referral yet?” Strzok asks Page. “We really want to drop the LHM [a summary of an investigation called a Letterhead Memorandum] and 302s [FBI interview notes] into that environment?”
Page called the requests from the Hill, “insulting” and Strzok declared “I just have no faith in Congress to respect our investigative information. The LHM and no more. Not even senior people’s 302, unless what we’d release via foia [the Freedom of Information Act].”
Even when the FBI was cornered into making documents available, they did their best to hobble efforts to read them. Here’s Peter Strzok texting Lisa Page on August 16, 2016, the day the FBI finally turned over a single heavily redacted copy of the 302 notes of Hillary Clinton’s FBI interview: “I’m strongly opposed to making any more copies for Congress. We limited on purpose, After careful consideration. If they let any particular committee get the copy, tough. Let them sort it out.”
Later in the month, Peter Strzok sneered to Page about the continued requests by Congress for documents: “Gowdy is really starting to p*ss me off,” Strzok wrote. Page was either commiserating or bragging in response, it’s not clear which: “302 and lhm going to be further delayed. I love my job.”
Come September 10, 2016, two and a half weeks from when then FBI director Comey would testify before the House Judiciary Committee, Strzok was starting to get concerned about what he had withheld from lawmakers. In particular, there were agent summaries of interviews with witnesses that had been requested, but were never provided to the hill: “thing is, there are VERY inflammatory things in the 302s we didn’t turn over to Congress (because they weren’t relevant to understanding the focus of the investigation) that are going to come out in FOIA and absolutely inflame Congress…”
What had Strzok so anxious? It turns out the FBI never bothered to search many, perhaps most, of the laptop computers provided to investigators by the Clinton State Department crowd. “The point is Reps will try and spin and attack whatever is in the ones [302s] not initially turned over to them,” Strzok wrote in a text message to Page. He went on: “Re 302s, didn’t search the laptops given to us voluntarily by various attorneys.”
“Why not?” asked Page. But before waiting for an answer, she offered a helpful explanation Strzok might want to try out: “Decision that it was unlikely to contain info relevant to our case in like of time constraints?”
No, Strzok admitted to her. Though the laptops had been turned over to investigators, the lawyers “would not consent” to the computers being searched “and we did not have probable cause to get on them.”
Of course, by the last month of the presidential campaign, the FBI did have a laptop in their possession and probable cause to search it—Anthony Weiner’s computer. That meant the brief revival of the FBI’s investigation into Hillary Clinton’s handling of classified emails. Which in turn meant an explanatory letter the FBI prepared for lawmakers. Page texted Strzok that she has been roped into working on a letter regarding “mye” (the acronym for “Mid-Year Exam,” the bureau’s code name for its Hillary probe).
“Letter to who?”
“Congress,” Page replies.
“Got it,” says Strzok. “F them”
“F them.” It’s worth remembering that phrase the next time someone asking questions about what the FBI and Department of Justice did during the 2016 election is accused of damaging democracy and undermining the Constitution.
In their efforts to unravel the tangled federal investigations of 2016 (one of which continues to this day) lawmakers have been seeking unredacted documents from the FBI. The FBI has been resisting, citing national security and the safety of sources. But are those objections overblown? Chairman of the Senate Homeland Security Committee, Ron Johnson, wrote May 11 to FBI Director Christopher Wray asking for information regarding the production of documents and the reasons for the excessive redactions. He requested a response by “no later than 5:00 on May 24, 2018.” May 24 came and went, and Johnson has still not heard back from Wray.
Perhaps they’re taking so much time to respond because they want to be extra careful to get things right. Or perhaps there are some in the bureau’s headquarters staff who are still slow-walking congressional requests because they share the self-satisfied prejudices of Page and Strzok.
When it comes to Congress, does the FBI not trust them? Or is the bureau’s attitude simply “F them”?
