Senior officials at the FBI and the Justice Department engaged in a coordinated effort to selectively leak information potentially damaging to the Trump administration, according to Rep. Mark Meadows, who has reviewed a new batch of text messages between former FBI officials Peter Strzok and Lisa Page.
Meadows cites several messages between Strzok and Page, who had an extramarital affair while working at the bureau. In the messages, the pair discussed a “media leak strategy” as well as upcoming articles that resulted from the disclosures.
In one message, sent on April 10, 2017, Strzok, who has since been fired from the bureau for his biased messages, wrote that he “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.”
Two days later, on April 12, 2017, Strzok congratulated Page in relation to two defamatory articles about to be published about former Trump-campaign volunteer Carter Page. Strzok told Page that the articles are much “worse” than the previous reporting about her “namesake.”
Ten days later, Strzok wrote to Lisa Page: “Article is out! Well done, Page.”
The FBI and the Justice Department (DOJ) declined to comment. The White House did not respond to a request for comment.
“Review of these new documents suggests a coordinated effort on the part of the FBI and DOJ to release information in the public domain potentially harmful to President Donald Trump’s administration,” Meadows wrote.
The Washington Post article rehashes some of the allegations in the FISA warrant application and separately reports on the allegations from the anti-Trump dossier compiled by former British spy Christopher Steele. Congressional investigators have since uncovered that most of the FISA application was based on the Steele dossier. The applications failed to mention that the dossier was paid for by the Clinton campaign and the Democratic National Committee.
