Former FBI lawyer Lisa Page, a target of repeated attacks by President Donald Trump, sued the bureau and the Justice Department this week, saying officials unlawfully released a trove of politically charged text messages she exchanged with a senior FBI agent.
Page accused the agencies of violating the Privacy Act by showing reporters a document containing nearly 400 texts between her and former senior FBI agent Peter Strzrok, in which the pair discussed their intense dislike of Trump and fear that he might win the presidency.
The messages, which came to light in December 2017, fueled claims that the FBI was prejudiced against Trump and became ammunition for scores of angry tweets and public statements by the president and his supporters.
Page’s lawsuit said the attention has “radically altered her day-to-day life.”
“The officials who authorized the disclosure and their allies sought to use, and ultimately did use, the messages to promote the false narrative that Plaintiff and others at the FBI were biased against President Trump, had conspired to undermine him, and otherwise had engaged in allegedly criminal acts, including treason,” Page’s complaint read.
A Justice Department representative declined to comment on the case.
The lawsuit comes as Page has for the first time publicly pushed back against the president’s broadsides after remaining quiet about the political firestorm that engulfed her roughly two years ago. Last week, she gave a wide-ranging interview with The Daily Beast in which she slammed Trump for his “sickening” attacks against her and said she wanted to “take my power back.”
Responding to the interview, Trump fired off a critical tweet referring to Page as “the lover of Peter Strzok.”
Page’s lawsuit was filed a day after the Justice Department’s inspector general released a report rebutting accusations that top FBI officials were driven by bias in their investigation of possible coordination between the Trump campaign and Russia in the 2016 election.
Page and Strzok were key players in that investigation, as well as the probe of former Hillary Clinton’s use of a private email server for government work while she was secretary of state .
While working on those matters, the two used work phones to swap messages criticizing numerous politicians, including Trump, whom they called an “idiot.” In August 2016, after Page wrote that Trump was “not ever going to become president, right? Right?!” Strzok responded: “No. No he’s not. We’ll stop it.”
The Justice Department inspector general later compiled the texts as part of a larger body of documents it reviewed in its bias investigation.
In her lawsuit, Page said the release of the text messages with Strzok was intended to elevate the department’s standing with Trump at a time when the president was lambasting the department and then-Attorney General Jeff Sessions.
Officials allowed reporters to review the messages privately and instructed them not to reveal the department as the source, the lawsuit says.
“This clandestine approach is inconsistent with the disclosure of agency records for transparency purposes or to advance the public interest,” the lawsuit read.
Over the past two years, according to the lawsuit, Trump has targeted Page by name in more than 40 tweets and dozens of public statements.
The lawsuit seeks unspecified financial damages. It was filed in the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia.
(c) 2019, The Washington Post · Derek Hawkins
{Matzav.com}
In other words, she’s suing because she acted extremely unethically, violated her oath of office and actively interfered with the election. The text messages are evidence. Unless sealed by a court, evidence is available to the public.
If the phones in use belong to the FBI she probably has no right to privacy on govt equipment.
Everything opposites with these Trump haters.
But it’s okay for that protected criminal at the corrupt NSA, Democrat Mike Rogers, to release the name of private citizen Michael Flynn. It’s okay for the criminal Democrat Mike Rogers to release private phone records of ranking committee member Devin Nunes. This stupid Lisa Page should be sharing a prison cell with Peter Strzok.
I am not a lawyer, but a search of the topic `Privacy Act`seems to show that the law is relevant only to such things called system of records. Each one of these systems must be registered and they are listed on the DOJ web site. I cannot find e-mail on the registered list. And it seems to me, that e-mail is a work product of an employee, not in any way a record of, or about, an employee. And I would ask, does this lawsuit mean to suggest that an e-mail by an FBI employee to a friend filled with racist and anti-Black (or anti-Muslim) sentiments also qualify as protected under the Privacy Act.
And just who is paying for this, or is this a publicity stunt for an upcoming book (or both).