Fox News released a banner story Wednesday alleging that the Strzok/Page texts reveal that Barack Obama sought detailed briefings from the FBI on the Clinton emails and that Strzok/Page were supposed to supply these details. Within minutes of Fox’s explosive claim, Trump was tweeting about it; curiously enough while he was supposed to be attending an intelligence briefing.
First things first: Either we’re being lied to about “Executive Time” or even when Trump does attend an intelligence briefing he’s distracted and playing on twitter. Either theory is alarming, but it’s got to be one or the other. Trump was scheduled to be in a meeting at 11:00 a.m. EST, but at 11:10 here’s what he tweeted:
Now this did not go unnoticed.
So was Fox News the focal point of the intelligence briefing? Not that we would be surprised. Or perhaps Trump wasn’t at an intelligence briefing to begin with, and the White House reported him as being there because they need to report him doing something, lest we are left with the impression that he does nothing but tweet and watch TV.
Fox News, meanwhile, hyped the Strzok/Page texts as “shocking” and a bombshell. Listen to 27 seconds to get the flavor.
“POTUS wants to know everything we’re doing,” is hyped as referring to, once again, Hillary’s emails, and Barack Obama’s allegedly seeking a briefing from the FBI on them — for purposes of burying their great import, according to the never ending Fox/Hannity conspiracy theory on the topic.
Per usual, the facts easily disprove this ridiculous notion.
1. Then FBI Director Comey closed the FBI investigation into the Clinton emails on July 5, 2016.
2. It was September 28, 2016 before the next incident occurred, the discovery of additional emails on Anthony Weiner’s laptop.
3. The Clinton email investigation was reopened October 28, 2016.
Therefore, on September 2, 2016, the email issue was dead and buried, not to be resurrected until almost two months later. The reference, “POTUS wants to know everything we’re doing,” was to something entirely different, namely Trump-Russia. Think Progress:
So what was Obama interested in? Most likely, he wanted information about the counterintelligence investigation into the Trump campaign’s contacts with Russia, which was active on September 2, 2016. Obama has publicly said that he confronted Putin about election interference a few days later at the Group of 20 meeting in China, telling the Russian leader to “cut it out.”
“[I]t has to be about the Russia probe,” former Department of Justice official Matthew Miller told ThinkProgress in reference to the September 2, 2016 texts.
There was nothing inappropriate about Obama seeking a briefing on the Russia investigation. “[S]ince the Russia investigation was a counterintelligence, not a criminal, investigation at that time, it was totally appropriate for Obama to be briefed,” Miller said. “The Department of Justice is allowed to brief and coordinate with the White House on national security matters, including terrorism and espionage.”
The innuendo that Strzok/Page and the rest of the FBI was anti-Trump, involved in a pro-Clinton cover up and Obama was a part of it, is absurd, even by Fox News “standards.”
What’s even more alarming, is that Donald Trump bought the story at face value, like he buys everything Fox News is selling, without question. Clinton’s emails were not the subject of the Strzok/Page text, Trump-Russia was. Trump is chasing his own tail and doesn’t even know it.