President Donald Trump has long proven at this point to be ready and willing to seize on even the smallest bit of information in his ongoing endeavor to discredit the Russia investigation. While claiming to be completely innocent, he remains hellbent on seeing the inquiry, as led by Special Counsel Robert Mueller, go up in flames.
One of the items he’s used in his repeated attempts to get the Russia probe thrown out is the fact that two FBI agents who at one time were associated with the Mueller probe shared anti-Trump sentiments in private text messages. One of those agents, Lisa Page, no longer works at the FBI, and the other was reassigned away from the Mueller probe after the discovery of the texts.
All’s well that end’s well, right? The possible issue of judgment clouding anti-Trump bias was dealt with quickly and forcefully, so that should be enough for the president, right?
Wrong.
Tuesday night, he tweeted as follows:
‘Wow, Strzok-Page, the incompetent & corrupt FBI lovers, have texts referring to a counter-intelligence operation into the Trump Campaign dating way back to December, 2015. SPYGATE is in full force! Is the Mainstream Media interested yet? Big stuff!’
This tweet from the president of the United States is, by all appearances, based on an internet conspiracy theory. At one point around the time that Trump mentioned, Strzok and Page mentioned apparently overseas “lures” — and from there, the president and his followers have apparently concluded that at the time referenced in the president’s tweet, the FBI was setting up a spy operation targeting the Trump campaign.
It’s really a ridiculous leap of (non)logic.
1) BOMBSHELL- From DECEMBER 2015–The word LURES is redacted by FBI but not OIG
“OCONUS LURES”
OCONUS= Outside Contiguous US
LURES= In this context LURES = SPIES – multiple
Is this an admission that the FBI wanted to run a baited Sting Op using foreign agents against Trump? pic.twitter.com/OtLxlOEGsV
— Falco (@Nick_Falco) June 4, 2018
What’s even more ridiculous — and in a way acutely pressing — is that the president of the United States is spending his Tuesday evening attempting to cast this absurd conspiracy theory as credible.
He has in the past railed about the supposed “spygate” scandal, offering familiarly grandiose language when talking about it. At one point, he claimed the whole thing to be “starting to look like one of the biggest political scandals in U.S. history.”
That’s a wild assertion when in reality, all that went on is that the authorities had at least one informant interact with a couple members of his team as a part of their investigation into Russian meddling in the 2016 U.S. electoral cycle. Despite his above assertions, there was no conspiracy to spy on his campaign, and former Director of National Intelligence James Clapper didn’t say as much either. All he said was that there had indeed been an informant at work whose work was targeting the Russians.
Even still, Trump and his cronies are continuing down their delusional conspiracy theory rabbit holes where it seems like anything goes. To them, an FBI agent uttering the word “lure” in 2015 is evidence of a full blown government conspiracy to bring down Donald Trump. In reality, though, Trump doesn’t need anyone’s help to go down — he’s struggling enough as it is on his own.
After the above message about Strzok and Page, the president added others, quoting someone else’s comments about the supposed gravity of “spygate.”
Check out Twitter’s response below.
Featured Image via Eric Thayer/Bloomberg via Getty Images
