As regular readers surely know, when a political actor or actors want to minimize the impact of bad news, they release it on a Friday evening, in the hope that everyone will forget it happened by the end of the weekend. We have no doubt that this was the plan, here, because this story is a doozy:
Indeed, Politico got ahold of the settlement and gave us more details:
From reading the article, this appears to be a settlement of the claims that somehow releasing information to the public was a violation of their privacy, even though the lovebirds put the information on government phones. But a separate suit claiming that Strzok was wrongly fired continues.
Just to take a trip down memory lane, here are some of the offending texts as reprinted in the Durham report:
Strzok: [Bernie Sanders is] an idiot like Trump.
***
(After exchanging an article about Trump):
Page: What an utter idiot.
Strzok: No doubt.
***
Page: And holy [expletive] Cruz just dropped out of the race. It's going to be a Clinton Trump race. Unbelievable.
Strzok: What?!?!??
Page: You heard that right my friend.
Strzok: I saw [T]rump won, figured it would be a bit. Now the pressure really starts to finish [the Clinton email investigation] ...
Page: It sure does.
***
Page: [Trump's] not going to become president, right? Right?!
Strzok: No. No, he's not. We'll stop it.
And the Durham report doesn’t mention this one, also from Strzok to Page:
I want to believe the path you threw out for consideration in Andy’s office — that there’s no way he gets elected — but I’m afraid we can’t take that risk. It’s like an insurance policy in the unlikely event you die before 40.
This information was taken from their FBI issued phones. We don’t believe for one second that if the Justice Department vigorously fought these cases, Strzok or Page would get a dime for either claim. Indeed, the government would probably be legally required to turn over this information if any of the current federal Trump criminal cases went to trial. So how could they possibly claim a right to privacy?
As for the wrongful termination, we wrote this a few years ago to Peter Strzok:
For some reason, after we wrote that, Strzok blocked this author. Was it something we said?
So, pardon us if we agree with Ted Frank when we say that in this author’s opinion, it sure looks like the fix was in. This surely doesn’t look like a genuine settlement to us. This looks like a payment for job well done. It seems more like:
‘Good job, Petey and Lisa. You helped us seriously disrupt Trump’s first term. Here’s your check. Maybe you can buy a love shack somewhere.’
The indispensable Luke Rosiak lays it out:
Sadly, there isn't much we can do about this kind of bad faith settlement.
And we have yet to see a positive reaction to the story:
The book deals are often the worst scam around. It would be hard to do anything about it under the First Amendment, but know what they are: Rewards for either Democrats providing service, or for Republicans who stab other Republicans in the back.
We will admit before that infamous Strzok hearing we were worried that it would be a disaster. We thought he would get up there and try to pretend he is Joe Friday and intone seriously about the threat to Democracy that Donald Trump posed. Then we saw that clip that Susan shared as a gif, and we admitted that we were wrong to worry.
Again, we weren’t shocked that he was fired. We were shocked it took so long.
Given that Strzok and Page are fools, we think it is demonstrably foolproof.
And just to remind you, the purpose of a ‘Republicans pounce’ or ‘Republicans seize’ in a leftist article is to remind all good leftists ‘if you tell people you are upset about this, you are helping those evil Republicans.’ It is a tribalist signal to the party faithful not to catch themselves agreeing with Republicans.
So much for 'country before party.'
https://twitchy.com/aaronwalker/2024/07/27/friday-night-news-dump-peter-strzok-and-lisa-page-get-paid-2-million-payout-n2398907?utm_source=pjmedia&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=nl_pm&bcid=45d996accbfd36c3837ab03d1775182de3af75990f114699abb5aa9734e3dc72&lctg=28264343
No comments:
Post a Comment