Name the Social Media Author: Lisa Page and Peter Strzok? Or Lindsey Graham and Ted Cruz?

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In Lindsey Graham’s questioning of DOJ IG Michale Horowitz in today’s hearing on the IG Report on the investigation of Hillary Clinton, he said, repeatedly, “none of this is normal.” By that, he meant the comments that Peter Strzok and Lisa Page had made about Trump back in 2016. (1:45)

Would you say that this investigation was done by the book?

[snip]

The whole idea that this is normal, folks, there’s nothing here normal. I don’t want you think the FBI does this day in and day out. This is not normal.

He then reviewed a couple of Peter Strzok and Lisa Page’s texts.

Trump’s not ever going to be come president right? right?

No, no he won’t. We’ll stop him.

[snip]

I want to believe the path you threw out in Andy’s office, that there’s no likelihood he’ll become President. It’s like an insurance policy.

[snip]

God Trump is a loathsome human.

Lindsey then repeated that such comments were not normal.

None of this is normal, folks.

Senator Graham, as a former longtime government lawyer as a JAG, should talk to Senator Graham how abnormal such thoughts about Donald Trump are.

“As early as March, these people hated Trump,” Graham said in the hearing, horrified by the thought that someone could come to such conclusions that early.

Former Texas Attorney General Ted Cruz was also alarmed about the mean things that Strzok and Page had said in their social media about Donald Trump. (3:04)

These are difficult days in the Department of Justice and the Federal Bureau of Investigation. Both the Department and the Bureau have long — decades long, in the Department’s case, century’s long traditions of fair and impartial administration of justice. There are thousands of honorable good men and women that work at the Bureau, that work at the Department of Justice, and yet their integrity has been called into question by misconduct and political bias at the highest level.

Cruz went on to quiz Horowitz about the things that Peter Strzok, as lead investigator, had said about Trump.

Is it true that during the period of the investigation in late 2015 and in 2016, when Mr. Strzok was in charge, he used an FBI device to call President [sic] Trump a quote Effing idiot, although I don’t believe he abbreviated it, a loathsome human, and a disaster?

Did he also say multiple times that, quote, Donald Trump cannot be President?

And on August 6, 2016, when FBI Counsel Lisa Page said to Strzok that, quote, maybe you’re meant to stay where you are because you’re meant to protect the country from this menace, meaning President [sic] Trump. Did Mr. Strzok reply that, quote, I can protect our country at many levels?

[snip]

And is it true that there are many similar statements by Mr. Strzok in the report?

[snip]

Does any of that conduct give anyone confidence in the fairness in the enforcement of justice?

These are some of the thoughts that this self-imagined arbiter of integrity had to say about Donald Trump during the period he defined, 2015 to 2016.

These are, of course, different things. Cruz and Lindsey were publicly sharing their thoughts about how unfit Donald Trump was to be President, how outrageous his racism, how unhinged he was. Strzok and Page were engaging in what they foolishly treated as private conversations, but did so on government owned devices at a time when they were conducting politically charged investigations.

I don’t mean to defend the decisions of Strzok and Page with regards to how they shared their thoughts about the unacceptability of Donald Trump.

But I will defend the principle that it is solidly normal to say that Trump is unacceptable.

And there are no better witnesses to that than Lindsey Graham and Ted Cruz.

There’s one other lesson Lindsey teaches us. “I’m glad I don’t text and email,” he also said. If Graham and Cruz’ personal devices were investigated with the scrutiny that Strzok and Page’s were, Strzok and Page might look tame by comparison.

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34 replies
  1. SpaceLifeForm says:

    It’s pretty clear there are CongressCritters that may be dealing with Blackmail.

    I would investigate Cambridge Analytica, SCL, AIQ, Facebook.

    • greengiant says:

      The likes of cambridge analytica 4,000 data points per person that Parscale says he never used has two products. One blackmail, and secondly a record for what articles an individual has gone and read to reveal their preconceived biases and hot buttons. Fluffer stenographers have two purposes, one to drive public opinion, second to put out a plurality of crazy batshit to see what sticks, so that CA and the likes can be used to select the lies to reverberate. Recall that R. Mercer plays in the world series of poker. Recall renaissance has some secret sauce method of making billions in profits and a dodging a 7 billion dollar tax bill. Secret sauce means we are stealing your monies and here is a fairy tale about how we do it. Like any sport or wall street people do the research to figure how to “win”.
      ‘

  2. Ollie says:

    I’ve choked so often over most anything regarding Trump.  Today?  I tasted bile.  It must be the inclusion of pure, delusional idiocy w/the likes of Cruz and Graham.   Agree, agree and most always: agree.  C.span/WJ has the most craziest idiots, racist (and PROUD of it by God) stupidest, ass licking worshipers  of that beast.  I mean they’re saying and often : He’s going to turn out to be the MOST incredible president, EVER.

     

    I weep

  3. earlofhuntingdon says:

    It’s as if Page and Strzok were channeling Lindsey and Ted.

    As you marvelously document, there was nothing unusual in any of their comments. They were common fodder among leading Republicans until after the summer convention in 2016. But that’s beside the point of whether these two did any more than Graham and Cruz to favor Clinton or to stop Trump. I think the IG concluded the answer was an obvious, “No.”

  4. Michael says:

    To be fair, the “We’ll stop it” text looks pretty bad and Strzok should have known better.

    • earlofhuntingdon says:

      How credible was the comment, though?  I think it pales compared to the top GOP’ers comments from spring and early summer.

  5. pseudonymous in nc says:

    There’s one other lesson Lindsey teaches us. “I’m glad I don’t text and email,” he also said.

    Did he stop because his 2016 campaign email was hacked by Russians? Weird how none of that ever got released.

    • SC says:

      I forgot that Graham said the FBI notified him that his campaign was hacked by Russians in August 2016. Also, apparently, some of Graham’s hacked emails (described as “mostly innocuous and mundane” in various places) appeared on DCLeaks. And yet . . . Graham certainly seems, um, conflicted about investigating Russian interference in the election.

        • Trip says:

          That describes Sessions for me. I think not being able to be his true self has made him a very bitter fuck. Of course, this is a cage of his own making.

  6. Rugger9 says:

    Let’s also not forget that as soon as Mueller knew about Strzok’s involvement, he was pulled off of the investigation of Kaiser Quisling.  Compare that to the antics of the palace and the rest of the GOP in DC, then and since.

  7. Palli says:

    Of course, “We will stop it” pales in comparison. Not only that, but the statement was on the tongues of most Anericans, few of us could comprehend a real possiblity of trump winning the election. There were many failsafes that failed. Especially, whatever deterrent the Electoral College was suppossed to be to prevent the ascension of an “unsuitable” person to the presidency. Surely that has been disproven one hundedfold…but probably not, just like ballot tabulation fraud nobody wants to believe

      • Palli says:

        Except people have been failing to vote for years. Perhaps you mean people were prevented from voting more than previous elections. Certainly, there were social & political elements to the campaigns that discouraged many from voting. There were deliberately designed impediments also. But the fact is the ballots, honestly produced & tabulated or not, did not elect trump.

        Knowing that makes no difference to our culture now. Children will pay the price now & into whatever is the future.

         

  8. Mutaman says:

    “but the statement was on the tongues of most Americans”

    Except most Americans weren’t employed by the FBI and conducting a major investigation. The stupidity of these two never ceases to amaze me. How could they put this stuff in writing under the circumstances? Where did they find the time to send so many messages? How could they be so dumb?

    • greengiant says:

      MAGA is in denial that Trump was and is a crook. At least two in the FBI thought that a crook would not be elected. The fake projector machine claimed Clinton hacked the primaries and the general election. That is just team Trump broadcasting that they did those crimes. Giuliani “was” going to prosecute until Trump made a campaign pledge back in the day. This is not about texts, this about the failure of the executive and congress and state to prosecute criminals, the 2008 financial crash, the Dupont/Dow chemical poisonings, the fracking poisonings, the Felix Sater stay out of jail with court proceedings sealed, Trump’s tax loss deductions, Wall Street/SEC corruption., yada yada yada. The Schneiderman blackmail situation was quite the clue drop.
      Recall the Mueller may not be the deus ex machina. Mueller was head of the FBI for the bogus 9-11, the anthrax debacle, the occupy movement infiltration, 2008 financial crash, and what did he do then, crickets. Fast and furious, that is some other agencies problem. The Sater missile buy back was on Mueller’s watch along with a globalized FBI.

    • Dev Null says:

      You trolls still pushing your lies about HRC’s mail server?

      Just about everything in the essay at that link is wrong; what isn’t wrong is irrelevant.

      Shoo, troll.

    • Bardi says:

      Hillary’s private server was not hacked.  Had it been, we would have seen emails from day one.   On the other hand the server she would have used was hacked some 200 plus times.

      Yes, Hillary violated a policy.  So what?

  11. klynn says:

    Honestly, context is everything. If you were a lead investigator and discovered evidence that someone running for president was a threat, the texts Page and Strzok produced would be exactly the tone I would want from agents concerned for our nation.

  12. Jon b says:

    didn’t Steele turn his findings over to journalists because he believed the fbi was not responding because of internal support of trump

     

     

    • Bob Conyers says:

      Steele said he turned to journalists because the FBI wasn’t engaging, but I don’t think he suggested a motive. And I don’t think the people he was dealing with were slow because of support for Trump.

      That’s not to say the NYC FBI wasn’t majorly screwing around, but they weren’t the ones Steele would be trying to convince. I think it was a combination of inertia, distrust of outside sources, belief that it could wait, and other forces at play. The FBI leadership was well aware what the GOP Congress would do if it came out they were chasing Trump-Russia links. The Obama administration in general regarding Russian interference in general was not exactly on fire on the issue.And Steele’s dossier had some issues too, although I think the process of following up should have had much more urgency.

      • SpaceLifeForm says:

        Consider the roles of the various players.

        Many will be the opposite of what you woud think.

        Some bad, some good. But plenty of the players that a lot of people think are good, well, they will be surprised.

        Before they realize what is happening.

        Storm ahead.

      • Bardi says:

        “And Steele’s dossier had some issues too,”

        The dossier has resolved and unresolved issues.  So far that I have heard, every “resolved” issue has been positive on topics involving Trump campaign treason, all the other issues are “unresolved”, perhaps due to Congressional (Republican) avoidance of any efficient and legal investigation?

    • earlofhuntingdon says:

      Laughable excuse that, IMHO, is not permitted even by the lenient standards of zealous representation.

      If a person’s communications are subject to a protective arrangement, such as the PRA or state analog, then it applies.  Using a software app with an auto-delete feature does not avoid the duty to preserve one’s communications.  It demonstrates the intent to violate that duty, removing one’s conduct from being accidental, negligent or reckless.

  15. orionATL says:

    i would guess that senator graham and senator cruz are smelling the burning pitch from the republican party rabble’s immolation of congressman mark sanford.

    sanford had been (until very recently :) ) an ex-governor and long-time republican leader in south carolina whose long-time philandering and public lying about it caused these rabble no problems whatever.

    here we see on display yet again a political mechanism by which an intensely loyal, ammoral, and substantially ignorant minority of republican voters end up holding the entire rest of the nation hostage to damaging and foolish legislation. 

     

    this HTML class. Value is https://www.washingt???  wtf?

    on south carolinian mark sanford saying publicly that our president trump was “fanning the flames of intolerance”, an entirely accurate statement:

    washington post, s. larimer, 2/17/17.

     

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