Compromised FBI agent Peter Strzok’s famous text message to his FBI lawyer paramour vowing to “stop” Donald Trump from becoming president probably is one of the best-known text messages ever.
But there’s a lot more that Strzok wrote that hasn’t been released.
The Washington watchdog Judicial Watch said Friday it obtained the first batch of messages through a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit that are among some 13,000 pages of previously undisclosed exchanges between Strzok and Lisa Page.
The 87 pages of heavily redacted messages document their “profanity-laced disdain” for FBI hierarchy and policies, Judicial Watch said.
The anti-Trump messages between the pair have taken center stage among congressional concerns about extreme partisan bias affecting the outcomes of the Hillary Clinton email and Russia probes.
Strzok, who led both of the FBI investigations, belligerently testified this week before Congress that he was not biased and he didn’t let his political opinions affect his work for the bureau.
Some members of Congress, however, simply didn’t believe that he could maintain neutrality while writing “f— Trump” and saying Hillary Clinton should win the 2016 election by a 100 million to nothing vote.
Judicial Watch obtained the documents through a January 2018 Freedom of Information (FOIA) lawsuit filed after the DOJ failed to respond to a Dec. 4, 2017, FOIA request.
The first release revealed Strzok lamenting a decision allowing social-media companies to publicize their receipt of national security letters asking for the personal information of tmembers.
Stated Strzok, “Sigh … are you f’ing kidding.”
Page, at one point, wrote to Strzok of a “third conversation” about an issue that developed at Guantanamo.
There, a defendant raised concerns with an Arabic translator because he also reportedly had been used as a translator “at a CIA black site.”
Strzok’s commented: “I cannot begin to describe the amount of f*ckupedness if true…”
On June 1, Judicial Watch filed a motion to order the Department of Justice to prevent Strzok and Page from deleting any records of incriminating communications. Judicial Watch argued that several of the text messages produced to Congress reference work-related communications between Strzok and Page through personal accounts.
Judicial Watch noted in January that the DOJ told Congress that the FBI had neither requested nor searched information from the personal accounts of Strzok and Page.
“Not until May did the FBI say it had written Strzok and Page letters asking them to preserve the communications but there have been no assurances that this was even done,” Judicial Watch said.
“Judicial Watch is in court successfully getting Strzok-Page documents thus far denied to Congress,” said Judicial Watch President Tom Fitton. “Yet the Justice Department is stonewalling and even protecting Strzok and Page by battling our request for preservation order to ensure that no government documents are destroyed.”
The organization said the documents were ordered delivered by U.S. District Court Judge Reggie B. Walton, who said the FBI should begin processing 13,000 pages of previously undisclosed records exchanged exclusively between FBI officials Strzok and Page between Feb. 1, 2015, and December 2017.
The first 500 pages of records were to be processed by June 29. The process will take more than two years to complete, Judicial Watch said.
