No Wray of Sunshine
FBI Director Christopher Wray’s explanation of Inspector General Michael Horowitz’s report on the handling of Hillary Clinton’s emails revealed him to be just another deep-state shill willing to ignore the attempted and ongoing deep-state coup against a duly elected president, Donald J. Trump. Regarding the organized attempt to by FBI leadership to keep Hillary Clinton out of prison and Donald Trump out of the White House, Wray sees no evil, hears no evil, and will speak no evil. In his Orwellian press conference, Wray spoke from a parallel universe:
"It's also important, though, to note what the inspector general did not find. This report did not find any evidence of political bias or improper considerations actually impacting the investigation under review," Wray told a press briefing at FBI headquarters. "The report does identify errors of judgment, violations of or even disregard for policy, and decisions that, at the very least, with the benefit of hindsight, were not the best choices."
Of course, Wray took advantage of the IG report’s reluctance to connect all the dots between the actions and the motives of those engaged in obstruction of justice like former FBI Director James Comey and Agent Peter Strzok, who headed the Hillary investigation and joining the Mueller team.
It takes either mind-numbing stupidity or corruption or both to find no evidence of anti-Trump bias that affected either the investigations of Hillary Clinton or Trump/Russia collusion in the text messages of Peter Strzok and Lisa Page. Wray merely says the matter will be referred to the FBI’s Office of Professional Responsibility (OPR), not bothering to explain how Strzok, despite his texts vowing to stop Trump, remains in the employ of the FBI.
Wray agrees with Inspector General Clouseau that texts such as these are not reflected in actions that clearly amount to obstruction of justice:
In August 2016, the IG notes, Strzok vowed to Page that they could "stop" Trump from becoming president, although the IG did not find that political bias tainted specific investigative decisions in the Clinton probe.
Trump is "not ever going to become president, right? Right?!” Page texted to Strzok.
“No. No he won’t. We’ll stop it,” Strzok responded.
Strzok had already tried to stop it by assisting with the edits of James Comey’s draft exoneration of Hillary Clinton, his bias showing up in explicit actions. Strzok provided the motive for these activities to cover up the guilt of Hillary Clinton, activities which constitute obstruction of justice in text messages between him and his mistress and fellow FBI Agent Lisa Page: While everybody was predicting a Hillary victory, Strzok had his doubts and elevated himself to the status of savior of America, requiring that Trump be stopped at all costs, with this end justifying any and all means:
Out of all the damning, politically charged anti-Trump text messages released, one text from Strzok to Page on August 15, 2016, raised the most suspicion. It referred to a conversation and a meeting that had just taken place in "Andy's" (widely believed to be Deputy FBI Dir. Andrew McCabe's) office. According to Rep. Jim Jordan (R-OH), Strzok had texted this: "I want to believe the path you threw out for consideration in Andy's office [break]... that there's no way he gets elected. I want to believe that... But I'm afraid we can't take that risk... We have to do something about it."
In another text, Page said: "maybe you’re meant to stay where you are because you’re meant to protect the country from that menace." Strzok replied: "I can protect our country at many levels, not sure if that helps."
"This goes to intent," Jordan said. "We can't take the risk that the people of this great country might elect Donald Trump. We can't take this risk. This is Peter Strzok, head of counterintelligence at the FBI. This is Peter Strzok, who I think had a hand in that dossier that was all dressed up and taken to the FISA court. He's saying, 'we can't take the risk, we have to do something about it.'"
Excuse me, Director Wray, but FBI officials like Peter Strzok had both the motive and opportunity to act on their virulent bias to obstruct justice and interfere in the 2016 election in ways the Russians could only dream of. Ironically, Strzok sought to take his bias from Hillary’s exoneration to Trump’s alleged Russian collusion when he joined the witch hunt of Special Counsel Robert Mueller. Strzok served as Mueller’s lead agent on the Russia probe until last July, when he was removed after the discovery of the text messages. One wonders -- if the text messages hadn’t been unearthed after Wray’s FBI said it had lost them, would Strzok still be working on Mueller’s team of Democratic donors and Clinton lawyers? We forget this tantalizing bit of FBI professionalism:
The Federal Bureau of Investigation has lost about five months of text messages between two top officials, Peter Strzok and Lisa Page, who openly disparaged then-candidate Donald Trump while working on the Clinton email investigation and the Russia probe investigation, according to a top Republican senator.
The officials in question are Peter Strzok and Lisa Page -- the two senior FBI officials who had texted each other hundreds of text messages in which they shared how much they loathed Trump and spoke of an “insurance policy” in the case of Trump’s election.
Strzok’s sense of urgency to stop Trump and save the nation at all costs extended to his joining the Mueller witch hunt despite doubts about its prospects for actually finding anything. Strzok felt the Mueller probe was his chance to obtain the goal of upending the Trump presidency:
Once President Trump won the election, to the shock and dismay of Lisa Page and Peter Strzok along with many others at the FBI and the Department of Justice, it is obvious that they hoped their involvement in the ongoing Russia investigation would lead to Trump’s impeachment:
May 18, 2017: Mueller was appointed Special Counsel on May 17, 2017. The next day Strzok and Page exchanged text messages in a discussion of whether Strzok should join the Special Counsel’s investigation. Strzok wrote: “For me, and this case, I personally have a sense of unfinished business. I unleashed it with MYE [Midyear Exam, the investigation into Clinton’s emails]. Now I need to fix it and finish it.” Later in the same exchange, Strzok, apparently while weighing his career options, made this comparison: “Who gives a f*ck, one more A[ssistant] D[irector]…[versus] [a]n investigation leading to impeachment?”
That the political bias of Peter Strzok and others in the anti-Trump FBI hierarchy led to concrete actions that, yes, impacted the Hillary and Trump investigations should be clear even to that famous film detective.
Daniel John Sobieski is a free lance writer whose pieces have appeared in Investor’s Business Daily, Human Events, Reason Magazine and the Chicago Sun-Times among other publications.