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Free Beacon Reporter: Trump Wanting To Fire Mueller Story Aimed To Divert Attention Away From FBI Texts

Matt Vespa
Matt Vespa  |  January 27, 2018 3:05 PM

Yes, some were a bit frustrated that we posted about The New York Times’ late Thursday night story about President Donald Trump wanting to fire Special Counsel Robert Mueller last June. The fact of the matter is it never happened, but it would certainly rehash the Russian collusion hysteria that has gripped the news media since Trump won the 2016 election. 

Yet, Washington Free Beacon reporter Liz Harrington noted the odd timing of the leaked story, noting it came two hours after it was reported that FBI agent Peter Strzok and bureau lawyer Lisa Page were worried that they were going to hard on Hillary Clinton during the probe into whether the former first lady mishandled classified information. It seemed to suggest the two were mulling pulling some punches concerning the former first lady, which is wholly inappropriate  (via Free Beacon):

During an interview with Fox News, Harrington said it was curious timing that the development that Trump considered firing Mueller months ago came out just two hours after lost text messages were leaked by Sen. Chuck Grassley (R., Iowa).

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"Here you have the top agent who had a hand in this Hillary investigation, and then also was brought into the Trump-Mueller probe, and he was completely biased against Trump. We've seen it and he was fired from it," Harrington said of Strzok. "Just as all the text messages are coming out to expose that, now what is the media jumping onto? A six-month-old story which they already had practically reported that Trump considered firing Mueller. But the fact is, he didn't fire Mueller."

Yes, odd timing indeed. Strzok and Page have become the poster children for unprofessionalism at the bureau. Besides the two of them having an extramarital affair, their text exchanges, which number in the tens of thousands, displayed explicit bias against Trump. They two really wanted Hillary Clinton to become president. Once Robert Mueller knew about the texts last summer, he removed Strzok from the Russia probe; he was reassigned to human resources. Prior to the texts becoming public, Strzok was a top counterintelligence agent at the FBI. 

He was was key in both the Hillary email investigation and signed off on the counterintelligence probe into whether the Trump campaign and the Russian colluded during the 2016 election last July. Congress has called for access to the documents relating to these texts, and on a related note—whether the FBI used the Trump dossier to secure FISA warrants on members of the Trump campaign. So far, the bureau has been stonewalling the investigative committees.