FBI Texts: 'Catastrophuck' Trump Nearly Drove Agents to Quit

A tranche of new messages between two former FBI agents reveals deep antipathy toward Trump from some of the people investigating him—but no proof of a ‘deep state’ conspiracy.

BETSY WOODRUFF
SCOTT BIXBY
04.26.18 9:21 PM ET

Forty-nine new pages of text messages between two FBI agents who investigated potential ties between the Trump campaign and the Kremlin were turned over to Congress on Thursday. The exchanges—once thought to have been lost in an FBI-wide glitch—further reveal the antipathy both agents felt toward the newly elected president, as well as the dread they felt following his firing of the FBI director.

The tranche of messages exchanged between Peter Strzok and Lisa Page, provided to Congress and reviewed by The Daily Beast, were sent between Dec. 16, 2016, and May 23, 2017—the period including President Donald Trump’s inauguration, his firing of FBI Director James Comey, and the appointment of special counsel Robert Mueller to oversee the investigation into Russian election interference.

The texts paint a portrait of two beleaguered federal employees who were equal parts anguished by and aghast at Trump’s election, torn between “our strong but flawed organization” and a “catastrophuck” president.

“I kept telling myself the organization is much bigger and stronger than any one person, that we’ll endure,” Strzok texted Page four days after Comey’s unceremonious firing. “But that didn’t seem to help.”

The messages were originally thought to be deleted, casualties of a glitch impacting roughly 10 percent of FBI cellular devices. They were later recovered, however, with the use of forensic tools by the Justice Department’s inspector general, who is currently heading up an investigation into the FBI’s investigations into both Clinton’s emails and Russian interference in the election.

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