As with most unsavory moments in the Trump administration often play out, the American public quickly moved on in October when President Trump, in front of thousands of supporters, acted out having an orgasm while pretending to be former FBI agent Peter Strzok yelling the name of ex-FBI lawyer Lisa Page.
But the moment, like most other attacks dealt by the President, hit Page with more weight than most. After months of focused attacks and insult from the President of the United States, that crude, unprecedented act in October was the “straw that broke the camel’s back.” Speaking out for the first time since she’s found herself at the center of Republican-fueled conspiracies about an anti-Trump bias at the FBI, Page sat down with Molly Jong Fast for the Daily Beast last week and described what it’s been like to endure as a target of Trump’s ire.
“It’s almost impossible to describe,” she told the Daily Beast, reflecting on the President’s lingering attacks. “It’s like being punched in the gut. My heart drops to my stomach when I realize he has tweeted about me again. The president of the United States is calling me names to the entire world. He’s demeaning me and my career. It’s sickening.”
“But it’s also very intimidating because he’s still the President of the United States. And when the President accuses you of treason by name, despite the fact that I know there’s no fathomable way that I have committed any crime at all, let alone treason, he’s still somebody in a position to actually do something about that. To try to further destroy my life. It never goes away or stops, even when he’s not publicly attacking me,” she added.
In coming days, the Justice Department’s inspector general report on the origins of the Russia probe will be released. While IG Michael Horowitz is expected to criticize at least one low-level FBI lawyer — who altered a document in his FISA court request to surveil Carter Page — the report is largely expected to exonerate Page of any wrongdoing, a finding she’s maintained since the IG first opened a review of her text messages.
“I don’t engage in any sort of partisan politicking at all (in the texts),” she told the Daily Beast, referencing the personal text message exchanges she had with Strzok in which she expressed a few opinions about not wanting Trump to get elected president. “But having an opinion and sharing that opinion publicly or privately with another person is squarely within the permissible bounds of the Hatch Act. It’s in the regs. Yeah, it says it plainly. I’m thinking, I know I’m a federal employee, but I retain my First Amendment rights. So I’m really not all that worried about it.”
Read the full interview here.
