An FBI agent who was once part of special counsel Robert Mueller’s probe into Russian election meddling hesitated before joining because he thought the “odds are nothing” that it would turn up anything serious against President Trump, and predicted that “there’s no big there, there,” according to a Republican senator who released text messages from the agent.
Senate Homeland Security Committee Chairman Ron Johnson, R-Wis., released texts sent by Peter Strzok and Lisa Page, former FBI employees who worked on the agency’s investigation into Hillary Clinton’s private emails and then on Mueller’s team, that he said indicated Strzok was skeptical about the probe.
In one text, Strzok — the FBI’s deputy counterintelligence chief — said to Page, “You and I both know the odds are nothing. If I thought it was likely, I’d be there no question. I hesitate in part because of my gut sense and concerned there’s no big there, there.”
The text does not explicitly mention the Mueller probe, but it was sent May 19, 2017, two days after Mueller was assigned to take over the Russia investigation. Johnson said the text “seems to imply Strzok was skeptical of about the inquiry.”
Page, with whom Strzok was having an extramarital affair, was also assigned to the Mueller team. Strzok was removed from Mueller’s team for having anti-Trump, pro-Clinton sentiments revealed in previously released text messages.
Johnson, who received nearly 400 pages of text messages from the Department of Justice last week between Strzok and Page, first revealed the latest revelation in an interview with WISN-Milwaukee on Tuesday.
“I think that’s kind of jaw-dropping,” said Johnson in the radio interview.
“In other words, Peter Strzok, who was the FBI deputy assistant director of the counterintelligence division, the man who had a plan to do something because he just couldn’t abide Donald Trump being president, is saying that his gut sense is that there’s no big ‘there’ there when it comes to the Mueller special counsel investigation,” Johnson added.
Strzok also wrote what they are discussing “will be in the history books” and “maybe the most important case of our lives.”
Page told him she doesn’t think he should do it, to which he said, “You would obviously excel on the team.”
After a quick back and forth about what they each could bring to the team, Strzok said, “and this case, I personally have a sense of unfinished business,” and later asked if it would become “an investigation leading to impeachment?”
Johnson’s committee received hundreds of pages of texts messages between the two last week, but did not get those from Dec. 14, 2016 through May 17, 2017 — a very important time period.
Assistant Attorney General for Legislative Affairs Stephen Boyd told Johnson in a letter that the FBI told the Justice Department “that many FBI-provided Samsung 5 mobile devices did not capture or store text messages due to misconfiguration issues related to rollouts, provisioning, and software upgrades that conflicted with the FBI’s collection capabilities.”
“The loss of records from this period is concerning because it is apparent from other records that Mr. Strzok and Ms. Page communicated frequently about the investigation,” Johnson wrote over the weekend to FBI Director Christopher Wray.
On Monday, Boyd wrote to House Intelligence Committee Chairman Devin Nunes, R-Calif., to turn over requested Strzok/Page text messages, and inform him of the same issue.
Attorney General Jeff Sessions said Monday that the Justice Department will review why the texts messages were not preserved in the FBI’s system, and if they can be retrieved.
