An FBI lawyer wrote in a text to her lover in late 2016 that then-president Barack Obama wanted updates on the Hillary Clinton email investigation.
Two months before the presidential election, Lisa Page wrote to fellow FBI official Peter Strzok that she was working on a memo for then-FBI director James Comey because Obama ‘wants to know everything we’re doing.’
Obama had said five months earlier during a Fox News Channel interview that he could ‘guarantee’ he wouldn’t interfere with that investigation.
‘I do not talk to the attorney general about pending investigations. I do not talk to FBI directors about pending investigations. We have a strict line,’ he said on April 10, 2016.
‘I guarantee it. I guarantee that there is no political influence in any investigation conducted by the Justice Department or the FBI, not just in this case but in any case. Full stop. Period,’ he said.’
Lisa Page (left) wrote to her FBI colleague lover Peter Strzok (right) in September 2016 that then-president Barack Obama wanted an update from then-FBI director James Comey about the Hillary Clinton email investigation
Obama promised in April 2016 that he wouldn’t get involved with FBI investigations and there would be ‘no political influence’
The September 2, 2016 text message was among more 50,000 texts the pair sent during a two-year extramarital affair.
Fox News was first to report on the latest batch, which is to be released by Republicans on the Senate Homeland Security Committee.
The committee members will soon publish a report titled ‘The Clinton Email Scandal and the FBI’s Investigation of it.’
Comey testified to Congress in June 2017: ‘As FBI director I interacted with President Obama. I spoke only twice in three years, and didn’t document it.’
He didn’t address possible memos or other written reports he may have sent to the Obama White House.
But Comey did document his 2017 meetings with President Donald Trump, he said, because he feared Trump would interfere with the Russia probe.
Strzok was the lead investigator on the probe examining Clinton’s illicit use of a private email server to handle her official State Department messages while she was America’s top diplomat.
He was later a member of special counsel Robert Mueller’s team investigating alleged links betwen Donald Trump’s presidential campaign and Russia.
Comey was to give Obama an update on the Clinton email investigation before the 2016 election, according to Page; he testified before Congress in 2017 that he only spoke to Obama twice as FBI director – but didn’t mention whether he had sent him written reports
Clinton used a private, unsecured email server not accessible by government archivists to send and receive classified information while she was secretary of State; the FBI ultimately cleared her of criminal wrongdoing
Comey announced in July 2016 that he had cleared Clinton of criminal wrongdoing in the email probe, saying that ‘we did not find clear evidence that Secretary Clinton or her colleagues intended to violate laws governing the handling of classified information.’
On October 28, 2016, Comey said in a letter to Congress that the FBI was reviewing new emails related to Clinton’s tenure as secretary of State.
That revelation threw the presidential election into chaos.
On November 6, 2016, Comey told lawmakers that a review of those newly discovered emails had not altered the agency’s view that Clinton should not face criminal charges.
The text messages between Page and Strzok that emerged earlier showed their hatred for Donald Trump.
In August 2016 Strzok wrote to her that he wanted to believe ‘that there’s no way he gets elected — but I’m afraid we can’t take that risk. It’s like an insurance policy in the unlikely event you die before you’re 40.’
It’s unclear what that ‘insurance policy’ was, but the Justice Department was at the time debating an approach to a federal court for a surveillance warrant against Trump adviser Carter Page.
Strzok was elevated to overseeing the Trump Russia probe a month earlier.
In a text sent on October 20, 2016, Strzok called the Republican presidential nominee a ‘f***ing idiot.’
On Election Day, Page wrote to him: ‘OMG THIS IS F***ING TERRIFYING.’
Strzok replied, ‘Omg, I am so depressed.’
Five days later, Page texted him again: ‘I bought all the president’s men. Figure I need to brush up on watergate.’