Lisa Page, the former FBI lawyer who had an extramarital affair with ex-FBI agent Peter Strzok and exchanged anti-Trump text messages over fear he'd be elected, announced Sunday she was breaking her silence.
“I’m done being quiet,” she tweeted along with a link to a Daily Beast interview with her, in which she argues she did not commit any crime.
The article comes days before DOJ Inspector General Michael Horowitz is expected to release a report into possible FBI misconduct.
Page explains that she had finally had enough of staying silent after Trump’s “demeaning fake orgasm” at a Minneapolis rally in October.
Here’s the section of the rally she was referring to. You can decide for yourself whether you think that’s what it was.
Trump mockery of Page video:
— Right Epiphany (@rightep) December 2, 2019
Page claims Trump acted out fake orgasm.
In the two months after the MN rally not even fake news insinuated that.
But it's personal and perfect for victimization.https://t.co/27IMGGqWlo
“I had stayed quiet for years hoping it would fade away, but instead it got worse,” Page told The Daily Beast's Molly Jong-Fast. “It had been so hard not to defend myself, to let people who hate me control the narrative. I decided to take my power back.”
She said when the president tweets about her it feels like she’s “being punched in the gut.”
“The president of the United States is calling me names to the entire world,” she said. “He’s demeaning me and my career. It’s sickening.”
Page continued: “But it's also very intimidating because he’s still the president of the United States. And when the president accuses you of treason by name, despite the fact that I know there's no fathomable way that I have committed any crime at all, let alone treason, he's still somebody in a position to actually do something about that. To try to further destroy my life. It never goes away or stops, even when he’s not publicly attacking me.”
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She spoke of the Clinton email investigation and what it was like when former FBI Director James Comey was fired.
She insisted there was “no case to be brought here” but they pressed on at the direction of Comey who wanted it done ASAP and “outside the political environment.”
Page said it was “devastating” when Comey was fired, going on to compare it to a funeral, “only worse.”
Later in the interview she talked about when she first found out she was under investigation by the DOJ Inspector General’s office in July 2017, saying she had “no idea what they’re talking about.”
“I don't have the first clue what they're talking about. What I do know is that my text messages will reveal that I had previously had an affair,” she said. “I’m overwhelmed by dread and embarrassment at the prospect that OIG investigators, Andy, and my colleagues, now know or could learn about this deeply personal secret.”
She insisted her texts with Strzok about the president weren’t overtly political and argued that they fell within the “permissible bounds of the Hatch Act.”
Page compared the ongoing nature of the controversy and what she goes through on a day-to-day basis to PTSD.
Does it feel like a trauma? “It is. I wouldn’t even call it PTSD because it's not over. It’s ongoing. It’s not a historical event that is being relived. It just keeps happening.”
And it’s still going on? “I mean, he tweeted about me four days ago,” she told me on Nov. 18. “When Roger Stone got convicted, he asked, why isn’t Page in jail too? Not to mention, you know, his truly reprehensible, degrading stunt at his rally, in which he used my name to simulate an orgasm. And I don’t ever know when the president’s going to attack next. And when it happens, it can still sort of upend my day. You don’t really get used to it.”
Social media users were quick to call her out for portraying herself as the victim.
Cry more, homewrecker pic.twitter.com/vxDlrU92R7
— Comfortably Smug (@ComfortablySmug) December 2, 2019
Imagine thinking yourself the victim for receiving criticism in response to your engaging in conduct personal, political and professional that imperils, corrupts and undermines our system of government https://t.co/bUnnS90V3C
— Benjamin Weingarten (@bhweingarten) December 2, 2019
So I decide to try to read Lisa Page's "woe is me" take about how she's the real victim in the Russia hoax she participated in. Page is quoted saying something about how she decided to speak out (not because the IG report is about to make her and her cohorts look bad) but because
— Mollie (@MZHemingway) December 2, 2019
reference to Trump just making fun of the married Peter Strzok and Page carrying on an affair while planning their various anti-Trump efforts. I don't see how anyone remotely knowledgeable IYKWIMAITYD could describe this as a faked orgasm. https://t.co/CrdBqhTvYN
— Mollie (@MZHemingway) December 2, 2019
Anyway, as for the rest of the piece, I'm about as impressed with it as I am all of the other attempts to pre-dump before the IG report. Maybe their claims that they'll be completely exonerated for all of their actions are 100% true. But, given their track record, I'm skeptical.
— Mollie (@MZHemingway) December 2, 2019
Lisa Page is trying to be recast as the victim and a news site wrote up an adoring interview for her. This is why we don’t trust the media. Her bias while working extremely political cases is clear and evident to anyone with a functioning brain. To pretend otherwise is insulting.
— Robby Starbuck (@robbystarbuck) December 2, 2019
This condescension and ad hominem combined with a refusal to grapple with any of the litany of issues concerning the conduct of Lisa Page in conjunction with her colleagues—while you’re trying to make her a sympathetic victim coincidentally on eve of IG report—speaks for itself https://t.co/4PQl7IbHLL
— Benjamin Weingarten (@bhweingarten) December 2, 2019
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