New batch of Strzok-Page texts discussed recruiting White House sources to spy for FBI

Sara Carter
saraacarter.com

Senior Republican chairmen submitted a letter Thursday to Department of Justice Attorney General William Barr revealing new texts from former FBI Special Agent Peter Strzok to his paramour FBI Attorney Lisa Page showing the pair had discussed attempts to recruit sources within the White House to allegedly spy on the Trump administration.

Senate Appropriations Committee Chairman Charles Grassley and Senate Homeland Security Committee Chairman Ron Johnson revealed the information in a three page letter. The texts had been obtained by SaraACarter.com Tuesday and information regarding the possible attempt to recruit White House sources had been divulged by several sources to this news site last week.

The texts and sources reveal that Strzok had one significant contact within the White House - Vice President Mike Pence's Chief of Staff Joshua Pitcock, whose wife was working as an analyst for Strzok on the FBI's investigation into Hillary Clinton's use of a private server. A senior White House official told this news site that Pitcock's wife recused herself from the Clinton investigation as soon as Pence and Trump became the Republican nominees in July 2016. A senior law enforcement official also told SaraACarter.com that Pitcock's wife no longer worked under Strzok after she recused herself from the Clinton investigation. However, the text messages uncovered from November, 2016 and have left questions lingering about the relationship between Strzok, Pitcock and his wife among congressional investigators and lawmakers.

"The course of our oversight work we have reviewed certain text messages that may show potential attempts by the FBI to conduct surveillance of President-elect Trump's transition team," the letter states. 

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DOJ And Clinton Lawyers Struck Secret Deal To Block FBI Access To Clinton Foundation Emails: Strzok

Comment: The Clintons are sociopathic scum of the earth and represent everything that is wrong with our political, economic and law/justice systems today, not least the utterly ponerized intelligence agencies. 

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Zero Hedge

The Justice Department and Hillary Clinton's legal team "negotiated" an agreement that blocked the FBI from accessing emails on Clinton's homebrew server related to the Clinton Foundation, according to a transcript of recently released testimony from last summer by former FBI special agent Peter Strzok.

Under questioning from Judiciary Committee General Counsel Zachary Somers, Strzok acknowledged that Clinton's private personal email servers contained a mixture of emails related to the Clinton Foundation, her work as secretary of state and other matters.
"Were you given access to [Clinton Foundation-related] emails as part of the investigation?" Somers asked
"We were not. We did not have access," Strzok responded. "My recollection is that the access to those emails were based on consent that was negotiated between the Department of Justice attorneys and counsel for Clinton." -Fox News

Strzok added that "a significant filter team" was employed at the FBI to "work through the various terms of the various consent agreements."

"According to the attorneys, we lacked probable cause to get a search warrant for those servers and projected that either it would take a very long time and/or it would be impossible to get to the point where we could obtain probable cause to get a warrant," said Strzok.

The foundation has long been accused of "pay-to-play" transactions, fueled by a report in the IBTimes that the Clinton-led State Department authorized $151 billion in Pentagon-brokered deals to 16 countries that donated to the Clinton Foundation - a 145% increase in completed sales to those nations over the same time frame during the Bush administration. 

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See also: 

FOIA Docs Reveal Obama FBI Covered Up "Chart" Of Potential Hillary Clinton Crimes

Zero Hedge 

"I’ll make sure Andy tells Mike to keep these in his pocket"

The top brass of the Obama FBI went to great lengths to justify their decision not to recommend charges against former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton for mishandling classified information, according to Judicial Watch, which obtained evidence that the agency created a 'chart' of Clinton's offenses. 

The newly obtained emails came in response to a court ordered Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request that the DOJ had previously ignored. 

Via Judicial Watch (emphasis ours): 

• Three days after then-FBI Director James Comey’s press conference announcing that he would not recommend a prosecution of Mrs. Clinton, a July 8, 2016 email chain shows that, the Special Counsel to the FBI’s executive assistant director in charge of the National Security Branch, whose name is redacted, wrote to Strzok and others that he was producing a “chart of the statutory violations considered during the investigation [of Clinton’s server], and the reasons for the recommendation not to prosecute…”

[Redacted] writes: I am still working on an additional page for these TPs that consist of a chart of the statutory violations considered during the investigation, and the reasons for the recommendation not to prosecute, hopefully in non-lawyer friendly terms …

Strzok forwards to Page, Jonathan Moffa and others: I have redlined some points. Broadly, I have some concerns about asking some our [sic] senior field folks to get into the business of briefing this case, particularly when we have the D’s [Comey’s] statement as a kind of stand alone document. In my opinion, there’s too much nuance, detail, and potential for missteps. But I get they may likely be asked for comment.

[Redacted] writes to Strzok, Page and others: The DD [Andrew McCabe] will need to approve these before they are pushed out to anyone. At the end of last week, he wasn’t inclined to send them to anyone. But, it’s great to have them on the shelf in case they’re needed.

[Redacted] writes to Strzok and Page: I’m really not sure why they continued working on these [talking points]. In the morning, I’ll make sure Andy [McCabe] tells Mike [Kortan] to keep these in his pocket. I guess Andy just didn’t ever have a moment to turn these off with Mike like he said he would.

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The Myths We Tell Ourselves

Michael Krieger 
Liberty Blitzkrieg

“We hang the petty thieves and appoint the great ones to public office.”

Your average mass media pundit regularly decries the fact Americans no longer have trust in the country’s institutions, yet simultaneously refuse to take any sort of responsibility for the situation. Government bureaucrats and other assorted supporters of our decrepit status quo tend to do the same thing. As is typically the case, I’ll take the other side.

Not only do I think it’s completely sane for Americans to have zero faith in their institutions, including but certainly not limited to the three-letter agencies, Congress and the Federal Reserve, I’ll take it a step further and argue we as citizens remain far too naive and trusting for our own good. If nothing else, the recent Justice Department Inspector General’s (IG) report on the FBI’s investigation of Hillary Clinton’s email server should underscore the point.

First, there’s the now infamous text exchange between between Peter Strzok and his mistress Lisa Page. The following excerpt is from the Executive Summary of the IG report:

We were deeply troubled by text messages exchanged between Strzok and Page that potentially indicated or created the appearance that investigative decisions were impacted by bias or improper considerations. Most of the text messages raising such questions pertained to the Russia investigation, which was not a part of this review. Nonetheless, when one senior FBI official, Strzok, who was helping to lead the Russia investigation at the time, conveys in a text message to another senior FBI official, Page, “No. No he won’t. We’ll stop it” in response to her question “[Trump’s] not ever going to become president, right? Right?!”, it is not only indicative of a biased state of mind but, even more seriously, implies a willingness to take official action to impact the presidential candidate’s electoral prospects.

This isn’t merely an expression of bias from some low-level agent, these are the words of a very senior employee of the FBI (who played a leading role in the Clinton email investigation and the Russia probe) implying that he, and presumably others, were willing to interfere in the political process to ensure Trump wouldn’t become president.

Things get even more interesting when you take a look at some additional texts between Strzok and Page highlighted in the IG report: 

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