Senate Homeland Security Committee Chairman Ron Johnson and Senate Appropriations Committee Chairman Charles Grassley recently made a shocking revelation to Attorney General William Barr. They claim the FBI may have used or attempted to use the wife of Vice President Pence’s former chief of staff to spy on the Trump White House.
The letter to AG Barr concerned texts former FBI Special Agent Peter Strzok sent to Lisa Page, his adulterous lover and FBI Attorney. Those texts reveal the two anti-Trump lovebirds discussed, at length, ways to “cultivate and recruit” sources within the White House in order to spy on the Trump administration.
Zero Hedge reports, ”The texts and sources reveal that Strzok had one significant contact within the White House — Vice President Mike Pence’s Chief of Staff Joshua Pitcock.”
Making things even more incentuous was the fact that during that time frame, the wife of Joshua Pitcock, was working for FBI agent Peter Strzok who was in charge of investigations into Hillary Clinton and Trump’s possible collusion with Russia to win the 2016 election.
Though Pitcock’s wife Katherine recused herself from the Clinton investigation when Trump and Pence became the Republican nominees in July 2016, and never worked on the Trump investigation, questions have lingered over whether or not Katherine was still working as an informant.
In part of the letter, Congressmen Grassley and Johnson say that in the course of their oversight work they reviewed text messages that “may show potential attempts by the FBI to conduct surveillance of President-elect Trump’s transition team.”
They go further to say, “In text messages exchanged between former FBI Special Agent Peter Strzok and former FBI Attorney Lisa Page, the two discussed the possibility of developing ‘potential relationships’ at a November 2016 FBI briefing for presidential transition team staff.”
The Senators are investigating the matter to determine if the texts show an intent to ‘develop relationships’ with the VP Pence or Trump transition team staff for the purpose of spying.
Not long after the presidential election, Strzok and Page shared ideas about the logistics of such an effort. Referring to FBI Assistant Director of Counterintelligence division Bill Priestap and FBI Special Agent Joe Pientk, Strozk texted, “Talking with Bill. Do we want Joe to go with Evanina instead of Charlie for a variety of reasons?”
Evania refers to William Evanina, National Counterintelligence and Security Center. He worked with FBI Special Agent Joe Pientk who interviewed former National Security Advisor Michael Flynn in January 2017.
Part of the disgraced former FBI officials’ revolves around “seeing if Katie’s (Katherine’s) husband is there, he can see if there are people we can develop for potential relationships.”
A former senior intelligence official told Conservative Daily Post, “my concern about this is the potential for information to flow from her to her husband to spin any information that the Vice President may or may not have heard during that time frame.”
In particular, is the question if information regarding Mike Flynn made its way to the FBI through an internal source.
In Grassley and Johnson’s letter to AG Barr’s they refer to Barr’s testimony before the Senate Appropriations Subcommittee. During that hearing, Barr was asked about his contention that spying definitely occurred. The letter states, “We share your concerns about these activities and are troubled by the apparent unauthorized disclosures of surveillance efforts and other classified information during the same time period.”
While Pence has in the past defended his former chief of staff, Pence condemned Strzok and Page for discussing the possibility of “infiltrating” his transition team. He is demanding further investigation into the reason the two planned to send an agent to his first intelligence briefing.
Pence said in a statement the action was “outrageous” and shows why the Republican Senators’ inquiry is imperative. He said, “The American people have a right to what happened and if these two agents broke the law and ignored long-standing DOJ policies, they must be held accountable.”
Pence’s former Chief of Staff’s wife’s connection to Peter Strzok raises more questions into the briefing Pence received on General Flynn’s (illegally) unmasked phone calls to Russian Ambassador Kislyak, and other issues.
The wife of a White House insider potentially spying on the Oval Office is bad enough. Agents of our nation’s top law enforcement agency seeking to cultivate such a clandestine operation is a matter of a much greater magnitude.
President Trump promised during the campaign to “drain the swamp” in Washington. He never promised that would be easy.
