Lisa Page Finally Speaks Out, Twists the Narrative To Make Herself the Victim
She’s one of the most infamous names to come out of the investigations surrounding Donald Trump, and is likely headed for being a footnote in the history books.
But for now, Lisa Page is playing the victim.
In a fawning profile published Monday by the liberal Daily Beast, the former FBI attorney defended her indefensible texts denigrating the Trump presidential campaign and attacked the Trump Justice Department for making them public.
She talked about being afraid of strangers in the Washington Metro and how even the sight of a “Make America Great Again” cap can send her walking the other way on a public street.
And other than that affair with a married FBI agent, she doesn’t think she did anything wrong.
According to the profile by Daily Beast contributor and unapologetic liberal Molly Jong-Fast, Page thinks there was nothing wrong with the texts she exchanged with former FBI Agent Peter Strzok that insulted the Trump campaign and Trump voters.
“At the end of July in 2017, I am informed by the DOJ Inspector General’s Office that I’m under investigation for political text messages and honestly, I have no idea what they’re talking about,” she said to Jong-Fast. “I have no recollection. And initially they’re very coy about it. They don’t tell me much about it. I don’t have the first clue what they’re talking about. What I do know is that my text messages will reveal that I had previously had an affair. I’m overwhelmed by dread and embarrassment at the prospect that OIG investigators, Andy, and my colleagues, now know or could learn about this deeply personal secret.”
Really? That’s all Page was worried about?
It might come as a shock to self-absorbed Washington swamp dwellers, but the huge majority of Americans don’t care much about whether one FBI lawyer might be committing adultery with an FBI agent.
They do care a great deal, though, when the power of the federal government is used to interfere in the democratic process — something the Page-Strzok texts explicitly reveal.
There were plenty of examples of anti-Trump bias in the texts, but the most famous was in August 2016, when Page texted Strzok to ask “[Trump’s] not ever going to become president, right? Right?!”
“No. No he won’t. We’ll stop it,” Strzok responded.
A 2018 inspector general’s report was “deeply troubled” by that exchange. So were millions of American citizens. But Jong-Fast dismissed the whole topic in a few flippant sentences.
Revealing as that exchange might be to a normal person, Page deals with her texts in the interview by blaming the Justice Department for releasing them. (She claims her political opinions are her own business, which would be true if they didn’t so obviously affect her work with the FBI to twist a presidential election.)
Page also talked about the toll the publicity has taken on her personal life, claiming that she can now be frightened by chance encounters.
“Like, when somebody makes eye contact with me on the Metro, I kind of wince, wondering if it’s because they recognize me, or are they just scanning the train like people do?” she said to Jong-Fast. “It’s immediately a question of friend or foe? Or if I’m walking down the street or shopping and there’s somebody wearing Trump gear or a MAGA hat, I’ll walk the other way or try to put some distance between us because I’m not looking for conflict.”
So, perfect strangers who wear Trump-supporting gear can apparently send Page into a panic, and somehow that’s portrayed as the fault of the president and his backers. (Page also pretty clearly has an inflated sense of her own importance, but in Washington, that’s probably par for the course.)
Page’s decision to go public was allegedly spurred by a speech Trump gave in October, in which he again mocked the former lovebirds Strzok and Page — Jong-Fast referred to the incident in her second graph to get the word “orgasm” up high in the story.
But Mollie Hemingway, conservative author and senior editor at The Federalist, posted a Twitter thread with a considerably different theory: With the Justice Department’s Inspector General’s report about the investigation of the Trump campaign due to be released in a week, its potential targets are getting their stories out first.
After knocking down the “orgasm” news hook, Hemingway got to the real point:
Anyway, as for the rest of the piece, I’m about as impressed with it as I am all of the other attempts to pre-dump before the IG report. Maybe their claims that they’ll be completely exonerated for all of their actions are 100% true. But, given their track record, I’m skeptical.
— Mollie (@MZHemingway) December 2, 2019
Hemingway had plenty of company in her skepticism.
It’s clear the rats are scrambling to save themselves now.
— Allen (@Allen92869524) December 2, 2019
Still laughing at “Trump faked an orgasm to mock her”
Her text messages alone, in her own words were enough for me! IG Report very soon..— Grace Rohlf (@GraceRohlf) December 2, 2019
she was a walking threat to national security…..extramarital affairs and using non-secure messaging and communications with a counter-intelligence FBI agent
— Derek Ball (@derekinseoul) December 2, 2019
Have to admire the spin though. Poor Lisa has been through the MAGA ringer LOL. @MollyJongFast
— Marsh (@Marsh55975293) December 2, 2019
The Page interview really is a marvel of projection and misdirection.
The former FBI lawyer — who served as special counsel to the deeply implicated former FBI Director Andrew McCabe — is claiming a kind of persecution for what she says are perfectly valid actions.
The interview essentially ignores the truly incriminating points of Page’s behavior and tries to keep readers’ attention on non-sequiturs like a Trump speech in October, and Page’s alleged fears of anyone wearing a MAGA cap.
It’s a victim act, through and through. Expect the mainstream media to lap it up.
But no one with any sense will buy it.
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