Posted on 07/13/2018 3:43:19 PM PDT by yesthatjallen
Former FBI lawyer Lisa Page on Friday afternoon faced a grilling from House Republicans keen to uncover any discrepancies between her testimony and Peter Strzoks, the counterintelligence agent who testified in public for 10 hours the day before.
Where the Strzok hearing was a pageant display of the animosity and deeply divided politics surrounding the bureau, Pages closed-door deposition led to few fireworks. She did not answer questions from reporters entering and exiting the Judiciary Committees closed spaces and the handful of lawmakers who conducted the interview provided few details.
Multiple Republican lawmakers described Page as cooperative and credible in marked contrast to their vituperative characterizations of Strzok and said that she answered some questions that Strzok would not.
We certainly learned additional things today, but I can tell you that the last thing anyone wants to be is falsely accused and her willingness to cooperate today speaks well of her, said Rep. Mark Meadows (R-N.C.).
The interview is just the first of two slated sessions. Page is scheduled to return on Monday to continue answering questions.
The overriding issue for us today is, will her testimony match up with his testimony? said Rep. John Ratcliffe (R-Texas).
Strzok on Thursday gave a confident and passionate defense of his conduct during the election, denying that he displayed any bias when exchanging thousands of texts critical of then-candidate Trump with Page. The two were having an extramarital affair at the time.
He further infuriated lawmakers when he declined to answer some questions on the instruction of the FBI, where he is still employed.
The appearance of FBI counsel in the interview with Page, who left the bureau in May, also frustrated Republicans on Friday.
Lisa Page is not an FBI employee, but the FBI was here providing counsel and giving her direction as to which questions to answer or not answer and there is a question as to the propriety of that before the House, said Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-Fla.), a frequent and vocal critic of the bureau.
Page also defended herself against charges of bias, according to GOP lawmakers in the room, providing context to the texts that they found unpersuasive if not as patently offensive as they found Strzoks self-defense.
One Democratic congressional source said Page appeared less assertive and confident in her answers than Strzok had been. That person added that two hours into the interview, she did not appear to have contradicted his testimony in any way.
Republican lawmakers see Strzok and Page as the key to exposing what they see as rampant bias within the Justice Department at a time when the bureau was conducting investigations related to both presidential candidates.
Strzok was one of the lead investigators on the Clinton email probe and was involved in the beginning days of the federal investigation into the Trump campaigns alleged ties to Russia. Page was a close advisor to then-deputy director Andrew McCabe, long a hot target on the right.
In particular, lawmakers have zeroed in on the texts as evidence of anti-Trump bias within the bureau. GOP members involved in the probe have also been interested in the timeline of events surrounding the opening of the FBIs original counterintelligence investigation into the Trump campaigns alleged ties to Russia.
Democrats see the GOP-led probe a joint investigation run by the chairmen of the Judiciary and Oversight Committees as a partisan sham designed to undercut special counsel Robert Muellers investigation into the Trump campaigns alleged ties to Russia.
The leaders of the probe have pushed back fiercely on that assertion, although several conservative members of the panel have used revelations about Strzok and Page to call for the Mueller probe to be shut down. The president and his allies have described the federal investigation as a witch hunt.
Our investigation is into what happened in the FBI in two investigations in 2016. It has nothing to do with what Robert Mueller is doing, Judiciary chair Bob Goodlatte (R-Va.) said Friday.
Just hours before Page arrived on Capitol Hill, Mueller handed down an indictment of 12 Russian nationals accused of hacking into Democratic political organizations and disseminating the stolen emails.
Pages appearance on Friday came after she defied a subpoena to appear on Wednesdayshe said because she had not yet received enough information about the scope of the committees questioning and access to her FBI notes and other documents. (Republicans characterized that rationale as an excuse and Ratcliffe on Friday suggested that she had intentionally wanted to hear Strzoks testimony before she spoke to investigators.)
Lawmakers then threatened her with contempt if she did not appear either publicly with Strzok on Thursday or on Friday behind closed doors.
Pages texts with Strzok were a focal point of a deeply critical report from the Justice Department inspector general examining the bureaus handling of the Clinton email investigation.
In perhaps the most explosive new revelation from the report, Strzok told Page Well stop it, after being asked, [Trumps] not ever going to become president, right? Right?!
Page left the bureau in May. Mueller removed Strzok from his team after learning of the texts and he was recently escorted from the building in what is believed to be a precursor to dismissal.
The IG in particular found that Strzok displayed a biased state of mind during a critical phase of the Clinton investigation, but that no decision made during the course of the probe was a result of bias or improper influence.
Strzok repeatedly made the case on Thursday that his personal political opinions did not inform his professional decision-making during the 2016 election.
At no time, in any of these texts, did those personal beliefs ever enter into the realm of any action I took, Strzok said, adding that multiple layers of agents above and below him at the bureau would not have tolerated any improper behavior.
The well stop it text, he said, was written late at night, off the cuff and it was in response to a series of events that included then-candidate Trump insulting the immigrant family of a fallen war hero.
But his explanations did not satisfy Republicans on Thursday, who hammered him from the dais for everything from bias to perjury to [looking] so innocently into your wifes eye and [lying] to her about Lisa Page.
And despite Republicans relatively complimentary assessment of her forthcomingness on Friday, Pages testimony appears to have done little to calm the waters.
The specific questions that Lisa Page answered that Peter Strzok did not heightened my concern that the processes at the FBI were contrived to fit the desired outcomes of people who were biased in favor of Hillary Clinton and against Donald Trump, said Gaetz.
I wonder what they talked about.
I bet that is was a big zero.
Hmmm. Haven’t seen the smugometer on this “grilling” she took.
She and her boyfriend would have co-ordinated their testimony. Ya .... I know that would be illegal ... but this IS the FBI Swamp so everything is legal if it can tarnish the Trump Administration.
Closed door ... Did they form any boy girl boy sammages ???
As Andrew McCarthy said today on the Hannity show, what’s the good of it, if you don’t have the subpoenaed documents to confront her with.
If page squealed on hillary she is going to need a squad of bodyguards.
So if it was improper for the FBI council to be there, why didn’t the Chairman exclude them? The Republican simply don’t know how to play hardball and get results.
Democrats saw what a meme-party Smirking Pete turned into and decided they didn’t need to add any more kerosene to this fire.
Gum cleanliness?
How could she not? Her boyfriend testified publicly the day before. Did she have a transcript at the hearing?
Her Boo is gay. Seriously.
I’m really interested to see her speak in public. Can she be as smug and self-righteous as Strzok? He will be difficult to beat, but nothing surprises me any longer.
Closed door because we all saw her lover’s (ugh) disgusting behavior yesterday.
..... Hmmmmmmm .... You make a gr8 point Joshua C .... All she had to do is watch yesterdays Strzok testimony LOL. I doubt she would have been sequestered .... That explains why it was arranged for her snot nosed miscreant lover to testify publicly the day before her closed door private testimony ....
Charge them both with sedition
1. not an FBI employee, Page nonetheless had FBI attorney minders advising her
2. “questions that Lisa Page answered that Peter Strzok did not heightened my concern that the processes at the FBI were contrived to fit the desired outcomes of people who were biased in favor of Hillary Clinton and against Donald Trump, said Gaetz.
Monday should be fun.
She sure has an advantage....since he was live yesterday. He lied, she lied, they both lied. All they have to do is corroborate their testimony. What a farce.
Arrogance is a cultural trait in the FBI. Never met one that wasn’t except retired Agent John L. Sullivan.
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