WASHINGTON — The Senate chairman who said this week that texts between two FBI lovers once involved with the Russia investigation indicated a possible “secret society” said today that the pair may have just been joking.
At issue were new text messages between Peter Strzok, the Deputy Assistant Director of the Counterintelligence Division, and FBI attorney Lisa Page. Special counsel Robert Mueller removed Strzok from the Russia probe when he become aware of the FBI agent’s 2016 text messages critical of Donald Trump.
Earlier this week, Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee Chairman Ron Johnson (R-Wis.) alleged “further evidence of corruption, more than bias — corruption of the highest levels of the FBI.”
“The secret society, we have an informant talking about a group that was holding secret meetings off-site,” Johnson said. “There is so much smoke here.”
Johnson said the next day that “everything I take with a grain of salt,” but “I’ve heard from an individual that … there was a group of managers within the FBI that were holding meetings off site.” He didn’t say what such meetings were about.
“When Strzok and Page had described a secret society, that didn’t surprise me because I had corroborating information,” he added.
Lawmakers would not release the text message that referenced a secret society, but ABC News obtained a copy of the message.
“Are you even going to give out your calendars? Seems kind of depressing. Maybe it should just be the first meeting of the secret society,” Page wrote to Strzok.
The calendars, CNN reported, were a gag gift of Vladimir Putin calendars bought by an employee to give to those working on the early stages of the Russia investigation.
Johnson told a CNN reporter today that it’s a “real possibility” that the “secret society” text was a joke between Page and Strzok.
“We will see what the next texts say,” the senator later said.
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