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Peter Strzok and Lisa Page’s texts shine a highly redacted light on how the Trump-Russia investigation began. It was July 31, 2016. Just days earlier, the Obama administration had quietly opened an FBI counterintelligence investigation of Russian cyber-espionage — hacking attacks — to disrupt the 2016 election. And not random, general disruption; the operating theory was that the Russians were targeting the Democratic party, for the purpose of helping Donald Trump win the presidency. FBI special agent Peter Strzok was downright giddy that day.

Peter Strzok and Lisa Page’s texts shine a highly redacted light on how the Trump-Russia investigation began. It was July 31, 2016. Just days earlier, the Obama administration had quietly opened an FBI counterintelligence investigation of Russian cyber-espionage — hacking attacks — to disrupt the 2016 election. And not random, general disruption; the operating theory was that the Russians were targeting the Democratic party, for the purpose of helping Donald Trump win the presidency. FBI special agent Peter Strzok was downright giddy that day. The Bureau had finally put to bed “Mid Year Exam.” MYE was code for the dreaded...

Cute how this works: Kick off the week with some “the Department of Justice is not going to be extorted” bombast from Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein, by which he rationalizes that his defiance of subpoenas and slow-walking document production to Congress — which is probing investigative irregularities related to the 2016 campaign — is required by DOJ policy and “the rule of law.” Then end the week with the Friday-night bad-news dump: the grudging removal of DOJ and FBI redactions from a House Intelligence Committee report on Russia’s election meddling. Now that we can see what they wanted to...

On his nationally syndicated radio talk show Wednesday, host Mark Levin interviewed former federal prosecutor Andrew McCarthy on the topic of Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s threat to subpoena and interview President Donald J. Trump, McCarthy suggesting that Mueller should not be permitted to subpoena Trump, nor even ask for an interview. “Well, I don’t think, Mark, that not only should a prosecutor not be permitted to subpoena a president by a court, I don’t think the Justice Department should allow a president to be even asked voluntarily to submit to an interview in the absence of evidence that there’s a...

I am assuming the authenticity of the questions that Special Counsel Robert Mueller reportedly wants to ask President Trump. The questions indicate that, after a year of his own investigation and two years of FBI investigation, the prosecutor lacks evidence of a crime. Yet he seeks to probe the chief executive’s motives and thought processes regarding exercises of presidential power that were lawful, regardless of one’s view of their wisdom. If Bob Mueller wants that kind of control over the executive branch, he should run for president. Otherwise, he is an inferior executive official who has been given a limited...

Would a $130,000 payment to buy a porn star’s silence violate campaign-finance laws? Greetings from beautiful Orange County. We’re getting ready for the second of two Golden State events (we were in San Francisco yesterday), part of National Review Institute’s celebration of Bill Buckley’s legacy a decade after his passing.For me, the road trip is tacked on to a longer-than-usual vacation. It has ended up being the longest break I have taken from writing in many years — maybe since I started writing full time 15 years ago. I am grateful for the time to think at length about things...

These columns have many times observed Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein’s failure to set limits on Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation. To trigger the appointment of a special counsel, federal regulations require the Justice Department to identify the crimes that warrant investigation and prosecution — crimes that the Justice Department is too conflicted to investigate in the normal course; crimes that become the parameters of the special counsel’s jurisdiction. Rosenstein, instead, put the cart before the horse: Mueller was invited to conduct a fishing expedition, a boundless quest to hunt for undiscovered crimes, rather than an investigation and prosecution of...

Richard Gates was charged with $100 million in financial crimes — and pled guilty to two minor offenses, one of them highly questionable. These columns have many times observed Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein’s failure to set limits on Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation. To trigger the appointment of a special counsel, federal regulations require the Justice Department to identify the crimes that warrant investigation and prosecution — crimes that the Justice Department is too conflicted to investigate in the normal course; crimes that become the parameters of the special counsel’s jurisdiction. Rosenstein, instead, put the cart before the horse:...

Gates was charged with $100 million in financial crimes — and pled guilty to two minor offenses, one of them highly questionable. These columns have many times observed Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein’s failure to set limits on Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation. To trigger the appointment of a special counsel, federal regulations require the Justice Department to identify the crimes that warrant investigation and prosecution — crimes that the Justice Department is too conflicted to investigate in the normal course; crimes that become the parameters of the special counsel’s jurisdiction. Rosenstein, instead, put the cart before the horse: Mueller...

Mueller may be seeking to defend at least the investigative decisions made by the FBI and the Justice Department, institutions he served for many years. Special Counsel Robert Mueller has been a busy fellow for the past week. Rapid fire, his indictment of several Russian nationals for meddling in the 2016 election has been followed by a guilty plea, for lying to investigators, from a lawyer tied to Trump-campaign figures Paul Manafort and Richard Gates; a new indictment against Manafort and Gates that, as anticipated, added tax- and bank-fraud charges (in Virginia) to already existing money-laundering charges (in Washington); and...

The justice department’s office of legal counsel should answer the question. It has become more urgent to ask: Why is there a special counsel in the Russia investigation? At this point, that question should be put to the Justice Department’s Office of Legal Counsel — in the federal government, it’s the lawyers’ lawyer. To get down to brass tacks: May the president of the United States be charged with obstruction based on non-criminal discretionary acts that are unquestionably within his constitutional authority as chief executive? Readers of these columns may recall that I opposed the appointment of a special counsel...

Why did Susan Rice send herself an email purporting to document this part of the meeting? Because she was C’ing her own A. Rice was nervous about the fact that, at the president’s direction, she had failed to “share information fully as it relates to Russia” with President Trump’s incoming national security team. This violated longstanding American tradition. Outgoing administrations have always cooperated in the transition to a new administration, whether of the same or the opposing party, especially on matters relating to national security. Susan Rice is far from the brightest bulb on the tree, but she was well...

The memo appears to confirm suspicions that a FISA court warrant targeted Carter Page based on information in the dossier funded by Hillary Clinton's campaign. What we have long suspected (see, e.g., here and here) has now been confirmed: The Obama Justice Department and the FBI used the unverified Steele dossier to convince a federal court to issue a warrant authorizing surveillance of a Trump campaign adviser. Confirmation came in the much-anticipated memorandum released today by the Republican-controlled House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence. The memo states that the Obama administration concealed from the court that the dossier was commissioned...

The FBI and Democrats don’t have good reasons for wanting to prevent its disclosure to the public. . snip All that aside, the FBI was guaranteed access to the memo before its publication because of the rules of the process. Once the committee voted to disclose, that gave the president five days to object. During that five days, Trump’s own appointees at the FBI and DOJ would have the chance to pore over the memo and make their objections and policy arguments to their principal, the president, and to the rest of the Trump national-security team. This tells us the...

Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation into the possibility the Trump campaign colluded with Russian officials appears to have morphed into an investigation into alleged “obstruction of justice.”On Tuesday, the Washington Post reported Mueller has requested to question President Trump directly about his decision to fire former FBI Director James Comey, as well as the departure of Trump’s former national security advisor, Michael Flynn. It is believed Mueller is looking for evidence that shows Trump’s motive for firing Comey was to end the FBI’s investigation into Flynn and Russian interference in the 2016 election.Although liberal pundits and many congressional Democrats have long argued...

New FBI texts highlight a motive to conceal the president’s involvement. From the first, these columns have argued that the whitewash of the Hillary Clinton emails caper was President Barack Obama’s call - not the FBI’s, and not the Justice Department’s. The decision was inevitable. Obama, using a pseudonymous email account, had repeatedly communicated with Secretary Clinton over her private, non-secure email account. If Clinton had been charged, Obama’s culpable involvement would have been patent. In any prosecution of Clinton, the Clinton–Obama emails would have been in the spotlight. For the prosecution, they would be more proof of willful (or,...

When you look at it hard, two conclusions are impossible to escape: First, at the height of the 2016 campaign, Obama intelligence officials anxiously adopted Christopher Steele’s allegations of traitorous conduct by then-candidate Donald Trump rather than first subject his “dossier” to rigorous investigation — even though Steele himself admits that his “raw,” “unverified” reports might not be true. Second, at the same time the FBI was receiving Steele’s reports — which were based on multiple-hearsay from anonymous Russian sources, and paid for by the Clinton campaign — Obama intelligence officials were briefing congressional leaders about them, thereby ensuring that...

We should want to know if our intelligence agencies were being fed misinformation.Two influential Judiciary Committee senators have referred Christopher Steele to federal law-enforcement officials for criminal investigation. Steele authored the salacious and unverified anti-Trump dossier commissioned by the Hillary Clinton presidential campaign. The referral was made by Committee Chairman Chuck Grassley (R., Iowa) and Senator Lindsey Graham (R., S.C.), who chairs Judiciary’s Crime and Terrorism Subcommittee. It is set forth in a brief letter written to the leadership of the department and the FBI. Appended to the letter is a non-public classified memorandum. As our David French outlined on...

In the Clinton-email case, her intent, regardless of her motive, was clearly criminal. The Justice Department is reviving investigations involving Hillary Clinton’s emails and the degree to which the State Department during Mrs. Clinton’s tenure as secretary was put in the service of the Clinton Foundation. Good. Indeed, it is long overdue. It underscores a point we’ve tried to make repeatedly here: You don’t need a special counsel for this kind of thing; such investigations are what we have a Justice Department full of career prosecutors for. The perverse institution of the independent prosecutor should be shunned whenever possible —...

On the election of Donald Trump and the first year of his presidency. “That’s how you got Trump!” This phrase seemed at first to be a playful quip, uttered here and there as the Left’s shock and horror over the election of President Donald J. Trump manifested itself in memorably bizarre ways such as grieving centers on university campuses where tender twenty-somethings and the tenured radicals who instruct them were invited to stroke “therapy dogs,” scribble in coloring books, stack Legos, and do their brave best to cope. At Cornell, they even staged a “cry-in,” with the Ivy League university’s...