It's not surprising. We obviously know that Team Mueller and the rest of the coup forces have been working hand in hand with the media. But, like so many of the recent revelations, this peels back the curtain and shows us the machinery behind the scenes. It tells us exactly how the campaign we are seeing all around us was developed and deployed. And it's quite revealing about the norms of the Obama years.
In one exchange, FBI counterintelligence agent Peter Strzok and bureau lawyer Lisa Page engaged in a series of texts shortly before Election Day 2016 suggesting they knew in advance about an article in The Wall Street Journal and would need to feign stumbling onto the story so it could be shared with colleagues.
"Article is out, but hidden behind paywall so can't read it," Page texted Strzok on Oct. 24, 2016.
"Wsj? Boy that was fast," Strzok texted back, using the initials of the famed financial newspaper. "Should I 'find' it and tell the team?"
"I can get it like I do every other article that hits any Google News alerts, seriously," Strzok wrote, adding he didn't want his team hearing about the article "from someone else."
You may remember Strzok as the FBI agent who wanted insurance against a Trump win. He was involved in both the Hillary email investigation and the pursuit of Trump officials. He was on Team Mueller before he was removed. He had interviewed Flynn and softened the Comey letter on Hillary from “grossly negligent” to “extremely careless.”
He was also having an affair with Lisa Page who was working for Andrew McCabe. The latter was a top FBI figure with close ties to the Dems. And appeared to have been a party to some of the Strzok-Page discussions against Trump.
What these latest revelations tell us is that Strzok-Page coordinated their anti-Trump campaign with the media. And they seemed to be doing it around the time when it could do the most political damage.
The Hill reviewed nearly three dozen texts in which the two agents discussed articles, tried to track down information about a specific New York Times reporter or opined about leaked information in stories that they fretted were "super specific'.
...
In one string of text messages just five days before Election Day 2016, Page, the lawyer, alerted Strzok, the counterintelligence agent, to a story in The Washington Post about a timeline in the controversial Hillary Clinton email investigation.
Page mentions a conversation she had just had with FBI chief of staff James Rybicki and openly expressed concern the information about the FBI's timeline was too specific for comfort in the article.
"Sorry, Rybicki called. Time line article in the post (sic) is super specific and not good. Doesn't make sense because I didn't have specific information to give."
A few days earlier Strzok texted Page about another new article, suggesting it was anti-FBI. "Yep, the whole tone is anti-Bu. Just a tiny bit from us," he wrote.
Page texted she had seen the article. "Makes me feel WAY less bad about throwing him under the bus to the forthcoming CF article," she texted. Congressional investigators are still trying to determine what the "CF article" reference means and who the agents thought they were trying to throw "under the bus."
It gets somewhat creepier from there.
The two agents also spent extensive time shortly before the 2016 election trying to track down information - including an address and a spouse's job - about The New York Times reporter Matt Apuzzo, who has reported on numerous developments in the Russia case.
"We got a list of kids with their parents' names. How many Matt Apuzzo's (sic) could there be in DC," Page texted. "Showed J a picture, he said he thinks he has seen a guy who kinda looks like that, but always really schlubby. I said that sounds like every reporter I have ever seen."
A minute later, Page added another text: "Found what I think might be their address, too."
Strzok writes back, "He's TOTALLY schlubby. Don't you remember?"
Page responded later by saying she found information on the reporter's wife too. "Found address looking for her. Lawyer."
Strzok cautions Page against using the work phone to track down information on the reporter. "I wouldn't search on your work phone, ,,, no idea what that might trigger," he texted.
"Oops. Too late," she responded back.
Now why would they need this kind of information just to contact a reporter?