Judicial Watch strikes again!
Conservative watchdog group Judicial Watch received 345 pages of Department of Justice records that show top FBI brass attempting to muddle James Comey’s Senate testimony about Hillary Clinton’s email scandal.
Top FBI officials wrote Congress a letter to supplement James Comey’s testimony — and a few hours later, President Trump fired Comey as FBI Director.
The new emails also show the media colluding with the FBI — shocker!
Via Judicial Watch:
In an email thread starting at 6:34 a.m. on May 9, 2017, with the subject line “Comey’s Testimony on Huma Abedin Forwarding Emails Was Inaccurate – ProPublica” nearly a dozen top FBI officials scrambled to draft a letter to Congress about Comey’s May 3 Senate testimony.
This email thread was concerned with a May 8, 2017, ProPublica report stating that, “Comey’s most surprising revelation was that Huma Abedin — [Anthony] Weiner’s wife and a top Clinton deputy — had made ’a regular practice’ of forwarding ‘hundreds and thousands’ of Clinton messages to her husband, ‘some of which contain classified information.’ Comey testified that Abedin had done this so that the disgraced former congressman could print them out for her boss.… FBI officials have privately acknowledged that Comey misstated what Abedin did and what the FBI investigators found.”
After a flurry of emails, by 8:56 a.m. Comey’s chief of staff, Jim Rybicki, sent the group a draft letter for Congress, saying, “Below is a draft that has been reviewed by the Director. Please let me know your thoughts.” At 2:02PM, Asst. Director for Congressional Affairs, Greg Brower, asked his colleagues to review the latest iteration of the draft letter to the Senate.
The FBI was also colluding with the media, according to emails exchanged between counterintelligence FBI chief Peter Strzok and his paramour FBI lawyer, Lisa Page.
In an April 10, 2017, email exchange between Strzok, Page and other redacted FBI officials with the subject line “NYT Last Shot,” the FBI appears to be given a preview of an upcoming article in The New York Times.
[Redacted] emails Strzok, Page and others: Pete/Lisa, The editing is nearing completion and we have one last shot to hear what the end result is. Do you have time later today or tomorrow that is convenient for a listening session? Likely by phone in Mike’s office.
In an email on April 26, 2017, ProPublica reporter Peter Elkind sent the FBI a “fact check” list of items in preparation for a story he was working on about James Comey and the Clinton email investigation. Elkind describes the list as, “a first small batch of straightforward details for fact-check purposes.” Elkind notes that his information showed that Comey had “ordered up files on about 30 previous cases where government had investigated mishandling of classified information.”
In response to Elkind’s questions, four top FBI officials, including Strzok, Page and Kortan were assembled as a “quorum” to discuss.
The emails also show the FBI reacting to a Judicial Watch press release discussing how an FBI court filing revealed the existence of a grand jury targeting Hillary Clinton.
Peter Strzok and his lover Lisa Page appear to get into an argument over the Judicial Watch press release and at one point Lisa Page refers to Strzok as “DAD Strzok, sir.”
The assistant general counsel in the National Security Law Branch responded, copying in E.W. Priestap, assistant director for Counterintelligence, but his response is entirely redacted.
In a separate email exchange on April 27, 2017, about the same Judicial Watch press release, Page replies to someone in the Office of General Counsel saying “I didn’t realize that we had said this publicly.” Next Page appears to quarrel with paramour Strzok via email about this issue:
Page emails Strzok: Are you serious, dude? I sent to [redacted]. So I’ve committed some grave sin for not including you on this? My apologies, DAD Strzok, sir.
Strzok emails Page: You know what? Take a step back and look at this… And stop with the DAD Sir bullsh*t. That’s not the point and you know it.
Page emails Strzok: I think you think you should take your own advice. I didn’t look to see who was on the distribution when I sent it. Sorry, that’s on me. But this is distinctly not a big deal. And I definitely didn’t err in not including you on a two-line email to [redacted]. Get a grip.
“These new Page-Strzok emails show the Obama FBI to be a mess both professionally and ethically” said Judicial Watch President Tom Fitton. “The best example of the ethical morass at the FBI are the emails showing how a report on Judicial Watch’s disclosure that a grand jury had been used in the Clinton email investigation set off a spat between Peter Strzok and Lisa Page.”
.@JudicialWatch: New Strzok-Page Emails Reveal FBI Efforts to Muddle Comey Testimony on Clinton Emails; FBI-Media Collusion https://t.co/Q0Xk8xuwla
— Tom Fitton (@TomFitton) June 20, 2019
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