WASHINGTON — Newly revealed text messages are raising questions about the political bias of two key FBI employees who worked on both the Russia probe and last year’s Clinton email investigation.
For more than a year leading up to the election, FBI Agent Peter Strzok and lawyer Lisa Page disparaged Donald Trump in text messages obtained by CBS News.
In one dating back to 2015, Strzok called Bernie Sanders “an idiot like Trump”. In March of 2016, Page texted “God, Trump is a loathsome human”… and “this man cannot be president”. On Election Day Strzok texted “OMG this is *expletive* terrifying”.
During the campaign, Strzok led the investigation into Hillary Clinton’s use of a private email server and personally changed then FBI Director James Comey’s description of her actions from “grossly negligent”— which could carry criminal penalties — to the softer “extremely careless”.
Later, he worked on Robert Mueller’s team investigating possible Trump campaign ties to Russia, but was dismissed when these text messages were first revealed. Page also worked on the Mueller team.
The texts are now the subject of a Justice Department ethics investigation and were sent to lawmakers Tuesday night.
Republicans are likely to renew calls to investigate how the Clinton email probe was handled when Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein testifies before Congress on Wednesday.
