Senator Ron Johnson of Wisconsin has made the second misleading claim regarding FBI texts and the Trump administration over the last several weeks. This one is about alleged involvement former President Barack Obama had in the FBI investigation into Hillary Clinton’s email use.
Senator Johnson alleged that a text exchange between FBI agents Peter Strzok and Lisa Page, in which Page writes, “potus wants to know everything we’re doing,” was about Obama soliciting information from the FBI on the Clinton investigation. It has been revealed that the text was on the subject of Russian meddling in the 2016 election.
As the Wall Street Journal Reported,
“… associates of Mr. Strzok and Ms. Page said that exchange referred to the president’s wanting information on Russia election meddling, which the FBI was heavily involved in over that period. That exchange occurred just days before Mr. Obama met Russian President Vladimir Putin at a summit in China. Mr. Obama said in December 2016 that he had addressed the issue of tampering with the election process with Mr. Putin at that September meeting.”
It was the second time that Senator Johnson had attempted to use text messages between Strzok and Page as evidence of anti-Trump bias at the FBI. Last month Johnson alluded to a message from Page that spoke of a “secret society” at the FBI. Johnson characterized the text as an example of corruption at the FBI.
“What this is all about is further evidence of corruption — more than bias — but corruption at the highest levels of the FBI,” Johnson said. It was later revealed that the text was written in jest.
The Justice Department Inspector General is conducting an investigation into the conduct of the FBI during the Clinton investigation. The text messages between Strzok and Page have been made public in the course of that investigation, but the FBI has redacted much of the conversations between the two agents because of security concerns, making gleaning the context and intent of the messages difficult.
The IG’s report is expected in either March or April of this year.