Welcome to 2018, where the White House is occupied by a man who has publicly lied thousands upon thousands of times in the past year alone and where, concurrent to that obsessive lying, he and his allies are attempting to get federal investigators off his back no matter what the cost, even though he’s supposedly completely innocent, and so has nothing to lose by not making a big show out of everything.
The GOP’s efforts to bend the nation’s justice system to their wishes don’t stop with trying to discredit and end the Russia investigation; they also remain infuriated that Hillary Clinton was never charged with a crime for her supposedly reckless handling of classified information while Secretary of State.
Considering this, it’s no surprise that Republicans have jumped on the idea that some sort of “secret society” to organize opposition to the president has operated at the FBI.
Republicans got their idea from a text message leaked from the conversations of agents Lisa Page and Peter Strzok, who have been revealed not only to have carried on with an extramarital affair but also to have harbored deep anti-Trump sentiments — like so many of the rest of us, of course. These anti-Trump feelings were made obvious in their text conversations, having been discovered during the course of an internal bureau investigation into the handling of the Clinton email investigation.
At the time of the messages’ discovery, Strzok still served on the team of Special Counsel for the Russia investigation Robert Mueller, but he’s been reassigned.
To say that such doesn’t take care of the issue to Republicans’ satisfaction would be an understatement. The collective party’s leadership is aghast that anyone in the nation’s justice system could hold any personal political opinions that aren’t perfectly in line with their own.
On Monday speaking on Fox News, Texas GOP Congressman Rep. John Ratcliffe relayed the supposedly incendiary information that he’d become privy to, saying:
‘We learned today about information that in the immediate aftermath of [Trump’s] election, that there may have been a secret society of folks within the Department of Justice and the FBI — to include Page and Strzok — that would be working against him. I’m not saying that actually happened, but when folks speak in those terms, they need to come forward to explain the context with which they used those terms.’
Check out some of Ratcliffe’s comments about the matter offered this week on Fox below.
According to numerous sources — with at least one outlet having the apparent actual text — it’s not at all indicated that there was an actual “secret society” at work in the FBI in Clinton’s favor and against Trump at any time before or after the 2016 presidential election.
The text, apparently sent from Page to Strzok the day after Trump’s surprise election victory, reads:
‘Are you even going to give out your calendars? Seems kind of depressing. Maybe it should just be the first meeting of the secret society.’
Would someone who actually had a secret society speak of it in such a way?
Come on, now, Republicans, this is getting nutty even for you guys.
On Tuesday, Wisconsin GOP Senator Ron Johnson made the wild claim that he had an informant telling him information about secret off-site meetings involving members of the FBI and the GOP — before saying wait maybe not the next day.
On Wednesday, Johnson said:
‘All I said when I read that, it didn’t surprise me, because, you know, we are the committee that whistle-blowers come to to talk about all kinds of problems throughout the federal government… I, you know, I have heard, you know, from somebody who has talked to our committee, that there — there is a group of individuals in the FBI that was holding secret, off-site meetings.’
The FBI no doubt holds numerous “secret, off-site meetings” on a regular basis.
In short, the furor over this supposed secret society is likely to go the way of the numerous other GOP conspiracy theories, all while Special Counsel Mueller continues his investigation whether the GOP likes it or not. He may soon interview none other than President Trump himself.
Featured Image via Mark Wilson/ Getty Images
