Here are some new texts between Peter Strzok and Lisa Page that suggest they were leaking to the media to smear Carter Page:
THE HILL – Rep. Mark Meadows (R-N.C.), chairman of the conservative House Freedom Caucus, disclosed in a letter Monday to Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein that, in April 2017, Strzok and Page discussed a specific media-leak strategy about Trump campaign adviser Carter Page.
Carter Page, of course, was subjected to a year-long FBI surveillance warrant but never has been charged with any wrongdoing — yet, somehow, nearly all the FBI’s suspicions about his ties to Russia made it into media reports.
Meadows’ letter suggests a possible reason why and how that happened.
On April 10, 2017, Strzok texted Lisa Page the following message: “I had literally just gone to find this phone to tell you I want to talk to you about media leak strategy with DOJ before you go.”
The next day, according to Meadows, the Washington Post broke a story on the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) warrant application against Carter Page.
And then, on April 12, 2017, Strzok texted regarding two articles coming out about Carter Page — whom he refers to as Lisa Page’s “namesake” — and that one is more damaging than the other.
Strzok, according to Meadows, then congratulated his FBI colleague Lisa Page, with whom he allegedly was having an affair. “Well done, Page,” he texted.
Meadows, who has led the charge against the FBI’s conduct in the Russia probe, told Rosenstein the “text exchange should lead a reasonable person to question whether there was a sincere desire to investigate wrongdoing or to place derogatory information in the media to justify a continued probe.”
FISA warrants are among the most secretive tools in the FBI’s arsenal, and information contained in them is supposed to be guarded closely from public release, in part because innocent people sometimes can be caught up in surveillance in complex espionage and terrorism cases.
In his letter, Meadows asks the deputy attorney general to provide more documents to explain what the FBI and the DOJ were up to in devising a “media leak strategy” and whether there was a “systemic culture of media leaking by high-ranking officials at the FBI and DOJ related to ongoing questions.”
It really is disconcerting to see this kind of stuff coming out of the top law enforcement agency in the land. It’d be bad enough if Carter Page were guilty and had been charged and arrested by the FBI. But here’s a presumably innocent man being covertly targeted by FBI agents and making his life miserable.
When all this is said and done, if I were Carter Page – assuming he is innocent – I’d sue the FBI for as much as I could get. Which I’m guessing would be a lot.
Here’s the actual letter by Meadows if you’d like to read it:
