Mark Levin on Missing FBI Texts: This Is Worse Than Nixon
Speaking Monday on his nationally syndicated radio show, conservative commentator Mark Levin eviscerated the FBI for losing 50,000 text messages that may contain evidence of anti-Trump bias within the bureau.
Levin suggested on his program that the loss of the text messages between two FBI agents is worse than the deletion of 18 minutes worth of recording pertaining to former President Richard Nixon and the Watergate scandal.
“Fifty thousand text messages missing — a critical gap, a critical gap. This is worse than the 18-minute gap that they used to mock Richard Nixon about, and his secretary Rosemary whatever her name was,” Levin said.
The comments are in reference to the Nixon administration’s deletion of 18 1/2 minutes worth of recording between then-President Nixon and his chief of staff, H.R. Haldeman, a recording which likely contained damning information about the former president’s involvement in the Watergate scandal.
How the tape got deleted was never fully discovered. Nixon’s secretary, Rose Mary Woods, initially took the blame, but her explanation of how she accidentally erased the recording did not hold up in subsequent investigations.
“Oh, yes, yes, yes. I remember when this stuff used to matter,” Levin said. “And the text messages that we do have are damning of the senior levels of the FBI, are damning of FBI interference in the last election at the highest levels, are damning of the intelligence agencies and the NSA.”
Levin is also calling for a special counsel to investigate senior members of the FBI, arguing that enough examples of impropriety by federal agents exists to warrant an inquiry.
“A special counsel needs to be appointed, who has no past connections with Washington, D.C., no connections with the FBI leadership, no connections with Mr. Mueller and his cabal, no connections with the United States Congress at all,” Levin said.
“Such men and women do exist, ladies and gentlemen.”
Levin, along with a growing chorus of Republican congressmen, are crying foul over the disappearance of thousands of text messages between Peter Strzok and Lisa Page, two FBI agents who were having an affair and played pivotal roles in the investigation into alleged Trump campaign collusion.
Strzok and Page were removed from the collusion investigation after texts between the two — which included strong anti-Trump rhetoric — were discovered. Many of those text messages were uncovered by the media recently, prompting Republicans and White House allies to call into question the impartiality of the ongoing investigation.
Amid the many texts discovered, Strzok suggested that there was an “insurance policy” in place in the event that Trump were to win the presidential election, and in another exchange, suggested that a “secret society” existed among federal agents that worked to prevent Trump from entering the White House.
The Department of Justice revealed last week that they have somehow lost five months worth of texts between the two FBI agents. Sen. Ron Johnson of Wisconsin received a letter from the DOJ announcing that texts between Strzok and Page from Dec. 14, 2016, until May 17, 2017, were no longer available.
President Donald Trump has panned the idea that those messages could somehow have gone missing, sarcastically casting the blame on Samsung.
No decision has been made yet on a possible special counsel investigation into the FBI’s conduct.
“It is possible these text messages that are missing, perhaps they really were lost. Perhaps it is another strange coincidence,” Rep. John Ratcliffe stated earlier this week. The Texas Republican has been leading calls for an inquiry into the disturbing text messages.
“It makes it harder and harder for us to explain one strange coincidence after another,” he added.
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