FBI Agent Who Exchanged Anti-Trump, Pro-Hillary Messages Was Also Key Investigator for Russian "Collusion" Probe, As Well As... Hillary Clinton Email Investigation

Oh, and he was allegedly having an affair with an FBI lawyer who worked for Andrew McCabe.

Andrew McCabe's wife ran for political office in Virginia, and took donations from Hillary bagman Terry McAuliffe during her race. McCabe decided that this did not constitute any conflict of interest and insisted on keeping himself central in the email investigation.

I guess McCabe knew the right people to put on his pet investigation. People you can trust -- goodfellas.

A top FBI agent at the center of both the Clinton email and Trump-Russia investigations was removed from Special Counsel Robert Mueller's team for exchanging derogatory text messages about the president with a colleague.

Peter Strzok, a veteran FBI investigator, was shuffled off to the FBI's human resources department by Mueller after the Justice Department’s inspector general opened an investigation into the texts, The New York Times reported on Saturday.

And according to The Washington Post, Strzok exchanged the messages with Lisa Page, an FBI lawyer who was also assigned to and later removed from Mueller’s team. Strzok and Page, who works for FBI deputy director Andrew McCabe, were reportedly having an extramarital affair.

Peter Carr, a spokesman for Mueller’s office, said that Strzok was removed from the Russia investigation as soon as the inspector general’s findings were revealed this summer.

"Immediately upon learning of the allegations, the Special Counsel's Office removed Peter Strzok from the investigation. Lisa Page completed her brief detail and had returned to the FBI weeks before our office was aware of the allegations," Carr told The Daily Caller.

The text messages showed Strzok and Page reacting with anti-Trump sentiments to certain news events, including the presidential debates.

Mueller's personnel moves, which were made at some point over the summer, had remained a mystery of the former FBI director’s expansive investigation.

Strzok was a major player in the Clinton email and Trump-Russia investigations.

He was the FBI's lead investigator on the Clinton email investigation, so much so that he interviewed the former secretary of state on July 2, 2016.

Days later, then-FBI Director James Comey announced that he would not be recommending charges against Clinton for mishandling classified information on her private email server.

More:

For nearly four months, Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s office, the Justice Department and the FBI have kept secret the fact that the FBI agent who oversaw the Russia investigation exchanged anti-Trump and pro-Hillary Clinton text messages with an FBI attorney who was also his mistress.

Those messages, the existence of which were revealed in bombshell reports published over the weekend, highlight a pattern of the Mueller team.

Many of Mueller’s prosecutors -- it has been extensively reported -- have made campaign contributions to Clinton and other Democratic political candidates. And a review by The Daily Caller shows that Mueller lawyers involved in the cases against four Trump associates are Democratic donors.

The discovery could also undermine the integrity of Mueller’s expansive investigation. That’s because Strzok is the FBI agent picked in July 2016 to supervise the then-fledgling investigation into possible collusion between the Trump campaign and Russian government.

Strzok's central role in the probe is already raising questions about how and why the collusion investigation was opened in the first place.

Carter Page, a former Trump campaign adviser targeted in the early stages of the investigation, told TheDC on Sunday that he is "curious…whether [Strzok's] fingerprints" are on a secret surveillance warrant taken out against him in Sept. 2016, just after he left the Trump team.

Over the weekend, Matt Drudge was tweeting the question, What's the punishment when the FBI lies to us?

I don't expect an answer.

posted by Ace at 12:54 PM

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