Tipsheet

WSJ: There's Mounting Evidence of 2016 Election Meddling Coming From the FBI

There is something rotten at the Federal Bureau of Investigation. I mean all of this is just absurd. We have an FBI agent and a lawyer with the bureau texting each other, one of which is having an extramarital affair with the other, cryptically talking about “insurance” against a Trump presidency. That text between these two parties was delivered on August 15, 2016. You also have Andrew Weissmann, Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s top lieutenant, voicing praise for then-acting Attorney General Sally Yates for refusing to enact President Trump’s executive order on immigration, which got her fired. Then, there’s another DOJ official, Bruce Ohr, who was demoted for meeting the authors of the infamous and unverified Trump dossier, Fusion GPS; Ohr’s wife, Nellie, worked for that firm during the 2016 election. If there is nothing rotten at the FBI, then it’s credibility is definitely in question, something that The Wall Street Journal’s editorial board mentioned in their op-ed about this mess. The two FBI employees at the center of the firestorm right now, Peter Strzok and Lisa Page are obviously no longer working with Mueller; Strzok was removed in August, while Page’s assignment with the investigation has already ended and she has been transferred elsewhere. Still, from this past summer to now—and we’re just learning about these 10,000 text messages between the two. The Journal makes it clear that there appears to be mounting evidence of election meddling emanating from the bureau:

“I want to believe the path you threw out for consideration in Andy’s office—that there’s no way [Trump] gets elected—but I’m afraid we can’t take that risk,” Mr. Strzok wrote Ms. Page in an Aug. 15, 2016 text. He added: “It’s like an insurance policy in the unlikely event you die before you’re 40.”

What “policy” would that be? The “Andy” in question is Andrew McCabe, the deputy FBI director. FBI officials are allowed to have political opinions, but what kind of action were they discussing that would amount to anti-Trump “insurance”?

In another exchange that month, Ms. Page forwarded a Trump-related article and wrote: “Maybe you’re meant to stay where you are because you’re meant to protect the country from that menace.” He thanked her and assured: “Of course I’ll try and approach it that way.” Mr. Strzok, recall, is the man who changed the words “grossly negligent” to “extremely careless” in James Comey’s July 2016 public exoneration of Hillary Clinton’s emails.

The McCabe meeting came on the heels of the FBI’s launch of its counterintelligence probe into Trump-Russia ties. July is also when former British spook Christopher Steele briefed the FBI on his Clinton-financed dossier of salacious allegations against Mr. Trump. The texts explain why Mr. Mueller would remove Mr. Strzok, though a straight shooter wouldn’t typically resist turning those messages over to Congress for as long as Mr. Mueller did.

Meanwhile, we’re learning more about the political motives of Mr. Mueller’s lieutenant, Andrew Weissmann. Judicial Watch last week released an email in which Mr. Weissmann expressed his “awe” and praise for Sally Yates, after the then acting AG and Obama holdover refused to implement Mr. Trump’s travel ban.

This should trouble anyone who cares about the integrity of the Justice Department.

[…]

Public confidence isn’t helped by the continuing Justice and FBI refusal to cooperate with Congress. Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein, who supervises Mr. Mueller, toed the Mueller-FBI line on Wednesday before the House Oversight Committee. He repeated FBI Director Christopher Wray’s preposterous excuse that he can’t answer questions because of an Inspector General probe. And he wouldn’t elaborate on the news that Nellie Ohr, the wife of senior Justice official Bruce Ohr, worked for Fusion GPS, which hired Mr. Steele to gin up his dossier.

The man who should be most disturbed by all this is Mr. Mueller, who wants his evidence and conclusions to be credible with the public. Evidence is building instead that some officials at the FBI—who have worked for him—may have interfered in an American presidential election.

So, again, what’s the insurance policy? Is it the dossier that contains salacious and unverified information about Trump? Or, as it seems, is it the FBI investigation into Russian interference in July. Did they hope to find actual evidence of collusion to nail Trump if he were to become president? Strzok was an agent with the counter-intelligence wing of the bureau. Whatever the case, it seems that meddling, or at least conversation of such activities, is coming from inside the house, or to be more accurate—inside the J. Edgar Hoover Building and not the Kremlin. Judicial Watch just filed a FOIA lawsuit to obtain all of Peter Strzok’s files relating to his reassignment from the Russia investigation conducted by Robert Mueller.