The Justice Department’s inspector general report on the Clinton email investigation was released on Thursday and gave us new insight into what former FBI investigator Peter Strzok and former FBI lawyer Lisa Page thought they could do to “stop” Donald Trump from becoming president.
“[Trump’s] not ever going to become president, right? Right?!” Page wrote to Strzok, with whom she was having an extramarital affair, in August 2016.
“No. No he won’t. We’ll stop it,” Strzok responded.
While there are still many questions that have to be answered — specifically with respect to why former FBI Director James Comey was found to be “insubordinate,” and that he “affirmatively concealed” his intentions from Justice Department leadership during the investigation into Hillary Clinton’s private email server — what the IG report does answer, however, is the question of whether an all-powerful shadow government working behind the scenes to ensure the status quo, sometimes called the “deep state,” really exists.
In the report, Inspector General Michael Horowitz slams Strzok and Page, who exchanged thousands of text messages with each other, for “a willingness to take official action to impact the presidential candidate’s electoral prospects.”
If Strzok and Page were planning on taking action to stop Trump from winning the 2016 election, either two things happened: One, they never followed through on their plan or, two, they actively tried to follow through on their plan and failed miserably.
For all this talk about the “deep state” trying to undermine and, ultimately, impeach Trump, the inspector general report really hurts the supposed credibility of the “deep state.” In all likelihood, the “deep state” does, in fact, exist, and we’ve been giving it too much credit.
For all the flack that the White House receives for its incompetency, perhaps the inspector general report’s biggest takeaway is how incompetent the “deep state” is as well.
If government institutions like the DOJ and FBI, which are part of this shadowy conspiratorial “deep state,” really wanted to stop Trump from becoming president, they missed the golden opportunity during the 2016 election.
Why would an all-powerful shadow government play the long game and sow public discord in our institutions when they could’ve ended a Trump presidency before it even began?
It’s because we’ve been conditioned to think that the powers that be operate sadistically and maliciously like an episode of “House of Cards.” However, the reality is that the “deep state” operates more like an episode of “Veep.”
