New documents might help prove that Peter Strzok was indeed acting in accordance with his personal political agenda – the very thing that the IG report denied.
The new docs were discovered by John Solomon:
Memos the FBI is now producing to the Department of Justice (DOJ) inspector general and multiple Senate and House committees offer what sources involved in the production, review or investigation describe to me as “damning” or “troubling” evidence.
They show Strzok and his counterintelligence team rushing in the fall of 2016 to find “derogatory” information from informants or a “pretext” to accelerate the probe and get a surveillance warrant on figures tied to the future president.
One of those figures was Carter Page, an academic and an energy consultant from New York; he was briefly a volunteer foreign policy adviser for the GOP nominee’s campaign and visited Moscow the summer before the election.
The memos show Strzok, Lisa Page and others in counterintelligence monitored news articles in September 2016 that quoted a law enforcement source as saying the FBI was investigating Carter Page’s travel to Moscow.
The FBI team pounced on what it saw as an opportunity as soon as Page wrote a letter to then-FBI Director James Comey complaining about the “completely false” leak.
“At a minimum, the letter provides us a pretext to interview,” Strzok wrote to Lisa Page on Sept. 26, 2016.
Within weeks, that “pretext” — often a synonym for an excuse — had been upsized to a Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) court warrant, giving the FBI the ability to use some of its most awesome powers to monitor Carter Page and his activities.
Here’s the letter in question:
FBI pounced on what it saw as an opportunity as soon as Carter Page wrote a letter to then-FBI Dir Comey complaining about a “completely false” leak. “At a minimum, the letter provides us a pretext to interview,” Strzok wrote to Lisa Page on Sept. 26, 2016. Here is the letter --> pic.twitter.com/1Zetw4QuK1
— Nick Short (@PoliticalShort) July 6, 2018
There’s some who have painted this as absolutely conclusive, but I’m not so sure. Given that Strzok says “at a minimum,” it’s unclear what he’s saying the evidence he thinks he’s seeing. It *could* be proof that he was being biased, or it could be just showing that he thought there was sufficient evidence to actually look into Carter Page.
The problem is that those who want to see evidence of bias will see it no matter if there’s other possible interpretations of the documents in front of them. And of course, the opposite is true of their opponents. We live in very dumb times, friends.
Here’s Carter Page being outraged about it all:
I like how Tucker Carlson says the evidence Carter Page didn’t do anything wrong is that he hasn’t been charged – what do you think he’ll scream if Carter Page is charged with anything? I know… #MAGA!!!