In the summer of 2016, FBI agent Peter Strzok began working on the bureau’s inquiry into Russia’s 2016 election meddling after concluding an investigation into Hillary Clinton’s misuse of confidential information on a private email server.
It was about this time that Strzok began venting his frustration to FBI lawyer Lisa Page. The two had been involved in an extramarital affair and sent thousands of messages back and forth over the course of a year, messages that have been the subject of an internal review into how the FBI handled its investigation into Clinton and whether political bias tainted its investigation into Russia and President Trump’s 2016 campaign.
The messages were so alarming that special counsel Robert Mueller dismissed both Strzok and Page from his team in 2017 for fear that their openly expressed disdain for the president would undermine his nonpartisan investigation.
Page now claims that these messages were “taken out of context” and that the president has used them to vilify her and Strzok. But the messages speak for themselves.
In one exchange, shortly after the 2016 election, Strzok wrote, “OMG I am so depressed.” Page replied, “I don’t know if I can eat. I am very nauseous.” The two also contemplated how they could put an end to Trump’s run. “[Trump is] not ever going to become president, right? Right?!” Page asks, to which Strzok replies: “No. No he won’t. We’ll stop it.”
Page says that her work on the Clinton and Russia investigations are more important than her musings with Strzok and believes Inspector General Michael Horowitz’s soon-to-be-released report will “exonerate” her. She could be right. In fact, reviews concluded that Page’s and Strzok’s sentiments did not affect their work.
But that doesn’t mean the messages are irrelevant or unimportant. Indeed, leaks suggest that Horowitz will specifically target lower-level FBI officials, such as Strzok and Page, for grossly mishandling their responsibilities while clearing upper-level officials of political bias.
Page told the Daily Beast that her texts with Strzok were far from political. If anything, they were largely devoted to personal topics such as work, family, and news of the day, she said. Reviews confirm that this is true. Many of the texts reflect their day-to-day lives in the FBI: They expressed anxiety and uncertainty over their roles and regularly criticized colleagues.
But the messages did, in fact, become political — so political that Mueller believed they could compromise his entire investigation. The messages were so blatantly partisan at times that the FBI had to conduct an internal review of the investigations in which Page and Strzok were involved. And to this day, the Justice Department is trying to figure out if these messages affected a legitimate investigation into the president of the United States.
These are the consequences of Page’s decisions, and no matter how badly she’d like them to go away, they’re important because context matters, as does accountability. Page is not a criminal, but she’s not a victim or a hero. She’s a former FBI lawyer who expressed partisan sentiments to another FBI employee, sentiments that are not secret and can never be made secret again.
By June 2017, Page’s relationship with Strzok had deteriorated. The last text message she sent him read, “Please, don’t ever text me again.”
Perhaps she should have said that sooner.
