Lisa Page, the former FBI lawyer who was accused of conspiracy by President Donald Trump for texts she wrote that were critical of him, took to Twitter Monday afternoon to express her feelings after the report released by Inspector General Michael Horowitz exonerated her of unprofessional bias against Trump.
Page was thrust into the national spotlight after a number text messages about then-candidate Trump that she sent to Peter Strzok, another FBI agent with whom she had an extramarital affair, were made public. In the texts, which were sent during the campaign, Page and Strzok expressed fear that Trump would be victorious in the election. "[Trump's] not ever going to become president right? Right?!" Page wrote, according to previous reporting by Newsweek. She also wrote that "This man [Trump] cannot be president," according to The New York Times.
After the texts were unearthed, the president began frequently targeting Page and Strzok for being key players in a wider "deep state" conspiracy to keep him out of office, apparently undermining the will of the American people. Since both Strzok were federal agents, it was believed that they played a hand in the investigations of the alleged links between the Trump campaign and the Russian government—also known as "Crossfire Hurricane."
However, the inspector general's report about the FBI probe into Trump, released Monday, said that Page's personal opinions of Trump when he was a candidate did not factor into the opening of any of the investigations against him.
"In this review, we found that, while Lisa Page attended some of the discussions regarding the opening of the investigations, she did not play a role in the decision to open Crossfire Hurricane or the four individual cases," the executive summary of the report on the Justice Department's website read.
On Twitter, Page shared the information that the report absolved her of being unprofessionally biased against the president.
"The sum total of findings by IG Horowitz that my personal opinions had any bearing on the course of either the Clinton or Russia investigations? Zero and Zero," Page wrote. "Cool, cool."
The sum total of findings by IG Horowitz that my personal opinions had any bearing on the course of either the Clinton or Russia investigations? Zero and Zero.
— Lisa Page (@NatSecLisa) December 9, 2019
Cool, cool. /end
Page broke almost two years of media silence in an exclusive interview with journalist Molly Jong-Fast that was published December 1 on The Daily Beast. In the piece, Page talked about the fallout of the debacle involving her and Strzok's text messages, including why she avoided the public eye for fear of being targeted by the president's supporters. She also spoke to how she felt when Trump appeared to mock her sexual affair with Strzok at an October rally, where he seemed to mimic an orgasm while saying, "I love you, Lisa! I love you so much!"
In the Daily Beast interview, Page also said that she did not think that the criticism and mockery from the president would let up even if the inspector general's report exonerated her—which it did.
"I don't kid myself that the fact will matter very much for a lot of people," Page said. "The president has a very loud megaphone."
