OPINION: This article may contain commentary which reflects the author's opinion.
Special Counsel John Durham released the findings of the years-long investigation into former President Donald Trump and alleged Russian collusion on Monday.
Around the same time the final report was made available to the public, an Obama-appointed judge delivered a crucial ruling in a case involving former FBI agents Peter Strzok and Lisa Page. In 2017, it was discovered that Strzok and Page carried on an extramarital affair and worked on high-profile cases together, such as Hillary Clinton’s unauthorized private email server and the investigation into alleged Trump-Russia collusion.
Strzok and Page exchanged thousands of messages via their FBI-provided mobile phones, some of which “expressed political opinions about candidates and issues involved in the 2016 presidential election, including statements of hostility” toward Donald Trump “and statements of support for” for Hillary Clinton, as the Justice Department’s inspector general wrote.
Now, the former FBI lovebirds are back in the spotlight.
The U.S. Department of Justice recently secured a court order to block former President Donald Trump from a deposition appearance in connection with lawsuits filed by Strzok and Page.
“The deposition of former President Donald Trump is hereby stayed until the deposition of [F.B.I. Director] Christopher Wray and any ensuing motion practice as to the remaining necessity of the former president’s deposition have been completed,” reads the order from U.S. District Judge Amy Berman Jackson.
Previously, Jackson ruled that FBI Director Chris Wray and Trump could be deposed in connection to the lawsuits.
Lawyers for the DOJ argued that Wray should be deposed first because he was ranked lower than Trump and that any information he may provide could result in Trump not having to testify.
In other words, Biden’s DOJ wants Trump to be forced to testify as part of the lawsuits.
“The Court is somewhat surprised to learn that since then, the parties have done nothing more than wrangle over the order of the two depositions,” Berman Jackson wrote. “The government seems chagrined that the Court did not order that the deposition of the FBI Director be completed first, but it may recall that it was the Court’s view that it was Director Wray, the only current high-ranking public official in the group of proposed deponents, whose ongoing essential duties fell most squarely under the protection of the doctrine in question.”
In her ruling this week, Judge Berman Jackson referred to her prior decision that Trump and Wray could be deposed for two hours and limited questions pertaining to the lawsuits.
Page and Strzok filed their complaints against the FBI and DOJ in 2019. Page’s lawsuit alleges her privacy was violated and Strzok’s suit contends he was wrongfully terminated by the FBI.
The #DOJ last week secured a court order to block former President Trump from a deposition appearance in connection with lawsuits filed by former #FBI officials Peter Strzok and Lisa Page.
Read More 👉 https://t.co/hECejnU964 pic.twitter.com/P0c05IxLLX
— The Epoch Times (@EpochTimes) May 14, 2023
Late on Monday, Durham released the findings on the years-long investigation into Trump and alleged Russian collusion.
Durham found the FBI used “uncorroborated intelligence” when it launched its investigation into Trump before the 2016 presidential election and that agents failed repeatedly to maintain “strict fidelity to the law” throughout the probe.
The Daily Caller noted crucial findings in the report about Hillary Clinton:
The report noted that the FBI received intelligence that Hillary Clinton’s campaign approved “a proposal from one of her foreign policy advisors to vilify Donald Trump by stirring up a scandal claiming interference by Russian security services,” specifically one that involved “tying him to Putin and the Russians’ hacking of the Democratic National Committee” to distract the public from her email scandals. It notes that President Barack Obama, Vice President Joe Biden, Attorney General Loretta Lynch, and FBI Director James Comey were personally briefed on Clinton’s scheme, known as the “Clinton Plan” in the report, by CIA Director John Brennan, who recorded mentioning the plan in his handwritten notes.
The “Clinton Plan” was obtained by the FBI while it was relying on the “Steele Dossier,” a discredited report of lurid allegations of Trump’s personal sexual activity, which the FBI knew was being funded and promoted by the Clinton campaign, according to the report. Durham quotes information from a meeting between the Dossier’s author, former British intelligence agent Christopher Steele, and FBI agents, as well as texts between FBI officials, to demonstrate that the agents knew the evidence was connected to Clinton.
Durham’s report also found that “neither U.S. nor the Intelligence Community appears to have possessed any actual evidence of collusion in their holdings at the commencement” of the investigation.
