Justice Department Now Handing Over Peter Strzok's Texts to Congress, Under Threat of Contempt Citation

I urge Donald Trump to give a public statement, a solemn one, from the Map Room or some other sufficiently serious setting, and declare that he is ordering, as President, his underlings to comply with Congress' demands for information, on pain of firing if they refuse.

He'd be on strong legal grounds. They have no right to refuse Congress' demands as it is. With their actual employer explicitly ordering them to comply, their refusal would be grounds for termination -- even for alleged "non-partisan" career employees.

And then he should clean fucking house.

Trump really needs to act the tough guy if he wants to be credible when he talks the tough guy.

Similar thoughts here.

Anyway, that said, the DOJ is complying with one of the many outstanding demands for information Congress requires.

The Justice Department is in the process of handing over to the House Intelligence Committee the anti-Trump text messages that got a key FBI official removed from Robert Mueller's Russia probe, Fox News has learned -- a move that comes as the panel weighs a possible contempt resolution.

House Intelligence Committee Chairman Devin Nunes, R-Calif., had demanded the text messages between FBI counterintelligence agent Peter Strzok and Lisa Page, an FBI lawyer with whom Strzok was romantically involved. Both were part of Mueller's Russia team at the time. Page has since returned to the FBI, and Strzok was reassigned to the FBI's HR department after the discovery of the anti-Trump texts.

...

The exact timeline is unclear, and only the relevant texts will be turned over.

By "relevant," I assume they mean texts that are not too personal as in "pillow talk between alleged lovers," but by permitting themselves to still conceal some text, they allow themselves, as usual, a loophole to stonewall and obstruct justice.

Update: There are 10,000+ texts between Strzok and other members of Mueller's team to go through. They say it will take "weeks" to determine which texts are "relevant."

Anyone want to bet that they'll deem any texts showing the partisanship of people besides the already-implicated to be "irrelevant"?

Oh, and this is juicy:

Strzok briefed the committee on Dec. 5, 2016, sources said. But within months of that session House Intelligence Committee investigators were contacted by an informant suggesting that there was "documentary evidence" that Strzok was purportedly obstructing the House probe into the dossier.

Devin Nunes thinks this is all still stonewalling:

But Nunes voiced skepticism on Saturday.

He said that after the Strzok texts were revealed, the DOJ expressed a "sudden willingness to comply with some of the Committee's long-standing demands" but added: "This attempted 11th-hour accommodation is neither credible nor believable, and in fact is yet another example of the DOJ’s disingenuousness and obstruction."

posted by Ace at 07:00 PM

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