Lisa Page (FBI Attorney)
Lisa Page (FBI Attorney)
Lisa Page (born August 2, 1980) is an American former Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) attorney, who served under former FBI Deputy Director Andrew McCabe.[16]
Formative period
Lisa Page (FBI Attorney) was born in the San Fernando Valley in California. Her family moved to Ohio in her teens, and following high School , she moved to Washington, D.C. to attend college[12] at American University. Following graduation, she moved back to Ohio to live with her parents, and there she attended graduate school at Ohio State University Moritz College of Law to get her law degree.
Personal life
Lisa Page (FBI Attorney) currently lives in the city of Washington DC with her husband, Joseph Burrows. The couple have a son and daughter.[8]
Lisa Page (FBI Attorney) enjoys books, traveling and spending her time with family.[8]
Career
After graduating from , Page became a member of a small group that entered the United States Department of Justice Honors Program in 2006. She was the only woman out of the class of five. Lisa Page (FBI Attorney) then worked as a federal prosecutor for six years.[12]
“I start [in the role] in early 2013, and there are two big events that kind of set the trajectory for the rest of my career at the FBI: the Boston bombing in April 2013, and Edward Snowden’s leaks in June of the same year.
And those are both significant in their own ways, because the Boston bombing introduces me to Andy McCabe, who at the time was the head of the counterterrorism division at the FBI.
Two months later, the Snowden leaks hit, which became a transformative moment for the intelligence community, setting off a series of reforms by the Obama administration with respect to the legal authorities that we rely on to collect intelligence.”
In 2016 Page worked on the Hillary Clinton email controversy, which plays a role in the 2016 election news of Russian meddling.
“There are two things that happen in the late summer of 2016.
The first, of course, is that the FBI gets the predication [courtesy of loose-lipped George Papadopoulos], which starts the Russian investigation.
We learn about the possibility that there’s someone on the Trump campaign coordinating with the Russian government in the release of emails, which will damage the Clinton campaign.”
By the end of July 2016, Page moved on to another investigation, the Russian government disinformation probe.[12]
Page was advisor to former Deputy Director Andrew McCabe, who was fired in Spring of 2017 and served as a special counsel for Robert Mueller's legal team. [8][11]
In The Media
Peter Strzok Messages & Resignation
During the 2016 election, Strzok and Page exchanged text messages.
The messages between the two FBI employees also revealed they were romantically involved.
Page and Strzok discuss an 'insurance policy' involving Donald Trump and his election campaign.
The messages discussed the FBI investigation of Russian interference in the 2016 election and Donald Trump entering the White House. Page clarified the confusion of the text message in a closed-door interview conducted in July of 2018. The 'insurance policy' Page and Strzok were referring to was how the investigation would change once Trump did win the election. Page expounds,[15]
"If he is not elected, then, to the extent that the Russians were colluding with members of his team, we're still going to investigate that even without him being President, because any time the Russians do anything with a US person, we care, and it's very serious to us.
But if he becomes President, that totally changes the game because now he is the President of the United States.
He's going to immediately start receiving classified briefings.
He's going to be exposed to the most sensitive secrets imaginable.
And if there is somebody on his team who wittingly or unwittingly is working with the Russians, that is super serious."
Breaking Her Silence
After resigning from her position over at the Federal Bureau of Investigation, Page's name was still spoken by President Donald Trump on numerous occasions, including an infamous October 11, 2019 rally in Minneapolis where the President immaturely and-in unpresidential fashion-acted out Page having an orgasm in front of thousands of people live at the Rally, and millions on television.[13]
In a December 2, 2019 interview with The Daily Beast, Page commented on keeping silent,[12]
“I had stayed quiet for years hoping it would fade away, but instead it got worse.
It had been so hard not to defend myself, to let people who hate me control the narrative.
I decided to take my power back."
When discussing the overall toll of the President's tweets and comments, Page admits it's been difficult to process,
“It’s almost impossible to describe, 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.”
Page was thrown under the bus on many occasions, with Office of Inspector General stating publications were not to print the information about the affair between herself and Mr. Strzok and that it was to remain out of the public eye. Unfortunately, newsprints like The Washington Post went ahead and printed their stories with the affair included. Lisa stated,[12]
“So now I have to deal with the aftermath of having the most wrong thing I’ve ever done in my life become public.
And that’s when I become the source of the president’s personal mockery and insults.
Because before this moment in time, there’s not a person outside of my small legal community who knows who I am or what I do.
I’m a normal public servant, just a G-15, standard-level lawyer, like every other lawyer at the Justice Department.”
Lisa Sues The Department of Justice and FBI
Page created a Twitter account in June of 2019 and posted her first tweet many months later on December 1, 2019. The tweet linked an interview with The Daily Beast where Lisa broke her silence on the comments made by Donald Trump and the subject of her personal business being leaked to news media outlets.[25]
On December 10, 2019 Page tweeted that she is suing both the Federal Bureau of Investigation and the United States Department of Justice for the mishandling of her private information. The tweet read,[25]
"I sued the Department of Justice and FBI today.
I take little joy in having done so.
But what they did in leaking my messages to the press was not only wrong, it was illegal."
Page Tweets Back
On December 10th 2019, at a rally in Hershey, Pennsylvania Donald Trump claimed, without evidence that Page had taken out a restraining order against Strzok: [27]
"I don't know if it's true.
The fake news will never report it.
but it could be true.
No, that's what I heard.
I don't know.
I mean, who could believe a thing like that?
No, I heard that Peter Strzok needed a restraining order to keep him away from his once lover.
Ah, Lisa, I hope you miss him.
Lisa, he'll never be the same."
Lisa responded with a tweet saying: [26]
"This is a lie.
Nothing like this ever happened.
I wish we had a president who knew how to act like one.
SAD!"
Rachel Maddow Interview
The evening of December 17, 2019 Lisa Page made her first television appearance in an interview with Rachel Maddow on The Rachel Maddow Show on MSNBC. She discussed how the Justice Department had let her down on two accounts: the release of her personal text messages and not coming to her defense from comments made both by the President and Republican officials.[29]
On the subject of the text messages and the aforementioned 'insurance policy', Lisa told Maddow,[28]
"It's an analogy.
First of all, it's not my text, so I'm sort of interpreting what I believed he meant back three years ago, but we're using an analogy.
We're talking about whether or not we should take certain investigative steps or not based on the likelihood that he's going to be president or not."
Page stated in the interview,[29]
“This is not how public servants should be treated.
My Justice Department betraying us.”
Lisa also commented on the fact that she was used as Jeff Sessions' 'foil'. Sessions was the Attorney General at the time and wanted pressure and eyes off of him. She also commented on the fact that William Barr, acting Attorney General could have said something in her defense, as well as Mike Pompeo. Page relayed,[29]
“I know what it looks like when [the Justice Department] is trying to protect its employees and what it looks like when it isn’t.
Even if there is wrongdoing, these institutions should be coming to their defense”
Page on the positive side to the experience, stated,[29]
"At least I have my voice out there.
At least if you're going to respond, respond to me instead of this caricature that you've drawn up about me."
Response to James Comey Washington Post Piece
On December 30, 2019 former FBI director James Comey published an opinion piece titled James Comey: This is what it is like to be attacked by the president. In the piece Comey details his personal feelings and experiences of being one of President Donald Trump's targets. The article was published on The Washington Post.[34]
The follow up comments read,
1.) "Plus one big difference: I am not just an FBI target of the President, but a female one.
So his followers understand that I'm therefore different, and "deserving" of a special kind of hatred, a vile reduction of my whole existence into body parts and sex acts."
2.) It's incredibly degrading and dehumanizing, but I suppose that's the point, isn't it.