HAYES: Wait for the Facts

Fox Business anchor Lou Dobbs called FBI officials “agents of treason.” Commenting on FBI director Christopher Wray, a Republican and a Trump appointee, he cried: “Lock him out of his office, confiscate all documents, records, computers, phones, keys, and begin investigation!” He told his 1.6 million Twitter followers that the top Department of Justice and FBI officials are “every bit as dangerous as our enemies” and announced that “it may be time to declare war outright on the deep state.”

The cause of such hysteria was a fragment of a message between two text-happy, anti-Trump FBI officials, investigator Peter Strzok and lawyer Lisa Page, his colleague and mistress. The message was sent the day after Donald Trump’s election and included a reference to a “secret society.” For days, these two words were all the public knew about the text. Yet elected officials sprinted to the cameras to hype their hypotheses about a republic-shaking FBI conspiracy.

Florida representative Matt Gaetz, a freshman Republican who has quickly learned to exploit the outrage-equals-airtime formula of cable news, made himself the face of the GOP’s deep-state theorizing, appearing again and again to sound the alarm about the president’s domestic enemies. “These are the elements of a palace coup that was underway to disrupt President Trump both before and after his election,” he said.

Wisconsin senator Ron Johnson, whose Homeland Security Committee first obtained the text, suggested more information was coming about the elaborate scheme. “Corruption of the highest levels of the FBI,” he reported. “The ‘secret society’—we have an informant talking about a group that was holding secret meetings off-site.”

The speculation about government malfeasance took off. Ann Coulter suggested FBI incompetence led to the 9/11 attacks. Rush Limbaugh wondered if the bad intelligence on Iraq’s WMDs might have been an intelligence community plot to embarrass George W. Bush.

Then the full contents of the text were reported. It reads like an inside joke, not the details of a coup. “Are you even going to give out your calendars?” wrote Page, reportedly referring to Russia-themed gag gifts. “Seems kind of depressing. Maybe it should just be the first meeting of the secret society.”

When CNN’s Manu Raju later asked Johnson whether the “secret society” references were made in jest, the senator admitted: “It’s a real possibility.”

So, then, never mind.

Republican politicians and the conservative media are increasingly embracing wild conspiracy theories. This is both unwise and counterproductive. And in this case, it’s obscuring serious questions about the government’s handling of the investigations into both Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump.

Thus far we’ve seen only a fraction of the text messages between Page and Strzok. But what we’ve seen should bother anyone interested in the rule of law. There’s disturbing evidence that senior FBI officials may have allowed their deep disdain for Trump to influence the manner in which they carried out their public service. Strzok worked on the FBI’s investigation of Clinton’s email server and, later, on the Robert Mueller investigation of Russian influence in the 2016 election. Several of their exchanges appear to suggest Strzok’s willingness to use his position for political ends.

The politicization of the Clinton investigation appears to have started early. According to a January 25 letter from Iowa senator Chuck Grassley to the FBI director, Page and Strzok agreed that it’d be wise to go easy on Clinton, given the possibility she’d win the 2016 election. “One more thing: she might be our next president,” Page texted Strzok on February 25, 2016. “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?” Strzok: “Agreed. I called Bill and relayed what we discussed. He agrees.” (The call was likely to FBI head of counterintelligence Bill Priestap.)

A text from Strzok to Page in August 2016 reads: “I want to believe the path you threw out for consideration in Andy’s office—that there’s no way he gets elected—but I’m afraid we can’t take that risk. It’s like an insurance policy in the unlikely event you die before you’re 40.”

In a message from May 2017, as Strzok was apparently considering whether to join the Mueller team, he refers to “a sense of unfinished business” that was “unleashed” by the Clinton investigation. “Now I need to fix it and finish it.”

Other messages provide additional information about the manner in which FBI director James Comey and Attorney General Loretta Lynch handled the Clinton investigation. One text suggests that Lynch already knew the outcome of the investigation when she publicly announced on July 1, 2016, that she would follow the guidance of “career people, who are independent.” Strzok wrote that the timing of Lynch’s announcement “looks like hell.” Page responded sarcastically, writing that Lynch’s decision was “a real profile in courage since she knows no charges will be brought.” Comey did not announce his decision not to pursue Clinton until July 5, 2016.

One of the driving forces of the Republican conspiracy-mongering was that five months of the texts between Strzok and Page had not been preserved by the FBI due to what DoJ described as a technical error. But, on January 25, Michael Horowitz, the Justice Department’s inspector general, announced that these had been recovered. They may well contain additional information relevant to the handling of both the Clinton and Trump investigations.

But first we are sure to hear of more conspiracies as part of the effort to undermine the FBI and Mueller’s investigation. The Republicans who eagerly propagate these theories are no doubt doing so in order to protect Donald Trump. They’re going to do what they do. Conservative media personalities who build audiences on indignation will do the same.

Ignore them. And wait for the facts.