Rep. Jim Jordan (R-Ohio) said the new batch of text messages from FBI officials released Wednesday saying former President Barack Obama wanted to know “everything” about Hillary Clinton’s email investigation “raises lots of concerns” and “lots of suspicion.” He spoke during an interview Wednesday on Fox News’ “The Ingraham Angle.”
“So taken in context, I think it raises lots of concerns, lots of suspicion. That’s why we need to look into it and find out exactly what’s going on,” Jordan said.
The Senate Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs released more text messages from FBI lovers Peter Strzok and Lisa Page Wednesday. Both officials played roles in the FBI’s investigations into Clinton’s use of a private email server while secretary of state, and potential Russian collusion with President Donald Trump’s presidential campaign. In their exchanges, Strzok and Page expressed rabidly anti-Trump and pro-Clinton sentiments.
In the newly released batch of messages, Page told Strzok on Sept. 2, 2016, that “POTUS wants to know everything we’re doing,” referring to former FBI Director James Comey’s preparations to brief Obama on the Clinton probe’s progress.
“You’ve got to take it in context. This is September 2. Remember, July 5 is the day they say we’re not going to charge Clinton, Comey does his now-famous press conference to say no charges would be brought,” Jordan said.
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“Later that same month, Peter Strzok — the same guy who ran the Clinton investigation — opens the Russia-Trump investigation,” Jordan continued. “Two weeks later, August 14, we have the text message from Strzok and Page where Peter Strzok says we need an ‘insurance policy’ in case the American people actually make Donald Trump president. And then two weeks after that, September 2, they say, ‘POTUS needs to know everything we are doing.'”
But Democratic lawyer Scott Bolden disagreed with Jordan’s assessment and largely dismissed his concern when he argued that it “amounts to conjecture.”
“[Obama’s] a private citizen, and the mere fact that you have dates, you have these details — it all amounts to conjecture. Doesn’t amount to anything definite,” Bolden said. “You can look into it if you want.”
“But we’ve got a Russian investigation as to whether the Russians meddled in our elections and whether Donald Trump … had any collusion or had anything to do with that investigation,” Bolden continued. “We ought to be focused on that, whether you’re a Democrat or a Republican, that ought to be the focus.”
Bolden said the text messages’ dates and all these “possibilities” represented “a waste of time.”
Jordan argued that the “broader context” provided by the text messages is important because the two FBI employees showed “bias and animus” against Trump in an “unbelievable” fashion.
But Bolden went so far as to say that the recent revelation that the unverified anti-Trump Russia dossier — which was funded by Fusion GPS on behalf of the Clinton campaign and the Democratic National Committee — played a role in obtaining a surveillance warrant against Trump campaign officials “doesn’t mean that anything’s tainted.”
Jordan replied, “It’s not just bias. [The FBI] took action.”
The Wall Street Journal’s James Freeman said this “really does get to this question of who did authorize going to a judge and getting a warrant to spy on the political opposition with an amount of evidence that really would not pass muster at our newspaper, and really in any professional newsroom.”
“And I think now the question for Mr. Obama is, did you realize this evidence was so thin?” Freeman continued. “Did he know what they were doing, going to the judge and the FISA court with this politically generated material with no corroboration?”
Related: Obama Wanted ‘to Know Everything’ About Clinton Email Probe
Freeman said that “these do not look like middle-management decisions” from the FBI. “These look like pretty high-level decisions to spy on your political adversary. Let’s find out who made them.”
Jordan highlighted that “no other FBI has taken a campaign opposition research document, taken it to a secret court to get a secret warrant to spy on a fellow American citizen” before the 2016 presidential election.
“I mean, that is unbelievable,” Jordan said. “The text messages give context to the whole mindset of these people who ran the Clinton investigation and then launched and ran the Trump-Russia investigation.”
PoliZette writer Kathryn Blackhurst can be reached at [email protected]. Follow her on Twitter.
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