In their exchanges — in which Page called Trump an “idiot” and “a douche,” among other insults — Strzok and Page had also criticized liberals, including Hillary Clinton, Chelsea Clinton, Eric Holder, and Bernie Sanders. Former colleagues have denied that Strzok was biased in his official role on the Mueller team, and Strzok had also told Page at one point that “my gut sense and concern is there’s no big there there.”
That “gut sense” did not prevent the pair from venting about the president, particularly in the early days of his administration, when they exchanged a music playlist of songs from nations whose citizens had been banned from entering the United States and mocked the president’s early-morning Twitter rants.
“You see the tweet about the Seattle judge?” Strzok texted on February 5, one day after Trump called into question the legitimacy of a federal judge who temporarily blocked his travel ban by calling him a “so-called judge.”
By mid-May, the morning of a Trump tweet storm in which he called the investigation into potential collusion “the single greatest witch hunt of a politician in American history!” neither agent could muster more than shock.
“Wow. Wow wow wow,” Page texted that morning. “Sad for me, even Bob Mueller can’t stop the 4:20 wakeups.”
“How far we’ve gone...” Page texted on February 27, linking to a New York Times article noting former President George W. Bush’s criticism of Trump’s nascent presidency.
“Yeah we’re pretty much a catastrophuck right now,” Strzok responded, quoting a source in another Times article who said of Trump that the Russians “think he is unstable, that he can be manipulated.”
Investigations into the Trump campaign’s potential links to Russian intelligence were a frequent topic of conversation between the two agents, even in the early days of the Trump administration. Less than a week after Trump’s inauguration, Page texted Strzok an ominous “It begins…” linking to a Times article titled “Russian Charged with Treason Worked in Office Linked to Election Hacking.”
The pair’s hostility to Trump — and apparent frustration with their work at the FBI — peaked in the aftermath of Comey’s firing.
“We need to lock in [redacted],” Page texted Strzok at 5:29 a.m. on May 10, the morning after Comey’s firing was announced. “In a formal chargeable way. Soon.”
“I agree,” Strzok replied. “I’ve been pushing.”
Later that day, a press briefing in which then-Deputy White House Press Secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders said Comey had committed “atrocities” during his time at the FBI prompted another outburst of incredulity.
