While obviously not concerned with a lack of impartiality on his own behalf, new e-mails suggest FBI agent Peter Strzok wasn’t too thrilled with the Obama White House creating an appearance of interference on behalf of the Clinton email investigation.
Strzok e-mailed a top counterintelligence official in January of 2016 to complain that then-White House Press Secretary Josh Earnest had made comments detrimental to the “appearance of non-interference” by the administration.
Hmmm … “the appearance of.”
An interesting choice of words, three of which are wholly unnecessary in that overall sentence unless – unless it truly is just an ‘appearance.’
Earnest told reporters around the time of Strzok’s email that some officials “have said … that she (Clinton) is not a target of the investigation,” adding “that does not seem to be the direction that it’s trending.”
“Below not helpful,” Strzok wrote regarding Earnest’s comments. “Certainly the WH is going to do whatever it wants, but there is a line they need to hold with regard to the appearance of non-interference.”
Emails show Obama White House statements on Clinton probe worried FBI’s Strzokhttps://t.co/Z5OUPPLNzZ
— Fox News Politics (@foxnewspolitics) April 20, 2018
Strzok didn’t limit his disdain to Earnest’s comments, taking a swipe at President Obama himself.
During an interview with “60 Minutes” back in October of 2015, Obama claimed that while Clinton had made a mistake, it really wasn’t that big of a deal from a national security perspective.
“I think she’d be the first to acknowledge that maybe she could have handled the original decision better and the disclosures more quickly,” he suggested.
“I don’t think it posed a national security problem,” Obama added. “It was a mistake that she has acknowledged.”
Strzok suggested that somebody needs to speak with the White House about keeping up appearances.
“This (Earnest’ statement) coupled with the President’s ‘no harm to national security’ statement provide a couple of data points for senior execs if the issue ever comes up in discussion at the White House,” he wrote.
Previously exposed text messages between Strzok and his girlfriend, FBI lawyer Lisa Page, show Obama wasn’t only incapable of keeping up the appearance of not interfering, he was pretty much actively interfering.
In those messages, the couple discussed the preparation of talking points for then-FBI Director James Comey to deliver to the former President.
Page said of Obama: “Potus wants to know everything we’re doing.”
Strzok, a key player in Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s original Russia probe, had to be ‘reassigned’ after the messages to Page were discovered.
The couple was specifically cited in a criminal referral letter signed by 11 House Republicans demanding an investigation of Comey, Clinton, former Attorney General Loretta Lynch, and former FBI Deputy Director Andrew McCabe.
Did the Obama White House interfere in the Clinton investigation? Should the DOJ reopen its investigation? Tell us your opinion below!
