Former FBI lawyer Lisa Page explained to MSNBC host Rachel Maddow what the text messages between her and former FBI agent Peter Strzok actually meant during her first televised interview on Tuesday.
Maddow asked Page what Strzok, who she was having an affair with, meant by having an "insurance policy" in case then-candidate Donald Trump won the 2016 presidential election.
"First of all it’s not my text so I’m sort of interpreting what I believed he meant back three years ago, but we’re using an analogy," Page explained. "We’re talking about whether or not we should take certain investigative steps or not based on the likelihood that he’s going to be president or not. You have to keep in mind if President Trump doesn’t become president, the national security risks, if there is somebody in his campaign associated with Russia, plummets."
Maddow then asked Page about the messages where she said she was fearful of a Trump presidency.
"By ‘we’ he’s talking about the collective we, like minded, thoughtful, sensible people who were not going to vote this person into office," Page said. "You know, obviously in retrospect do I wish he hadn’t sent it, yes. It’s mutilated to death and bludgeon an institution I love and it's meant that I've disappointed countless people. But this is snapshot in time carrying on a conversation that had happened earlier in the day that reflected a broad sense of he’s not going to be president. We, the democratic people of this country, are not going to let it happen."
Page is suing the Department of Justice for providing her text messages with Strzok to the press, saying it breached privacy laws. Page said there were plenty of ways for the DOJ to fulfill their congressionally mandated oversight responsibility "without politicizing our messages, without shoveling them out in the way that they did."