After enduring two years of bullying and degradation from the president and his friends, Lisa Page—the former FBI lawyer who admitted in private text messages that like most voters, she didn’t help elect President Donald Trump—has broken her silence in a major way.
She described in an interview published Sunday on The Daily Beast just what she had to give up for her right to free speech: namely, her dignity.
In December 2017, Trump and friends made private texts between Page and then-FBI agent Peter Strzok, who Page was having an affair with, public knowledge in order to claim an investigation into Russian interference in the president’s campaign was a secret “coup” to sabotage his election, according to The Washington Post.
Strzok was fired last August, and Page told The Daily Beast she was forced to live out the horror for more than a year after she resigned from the FBI in May 2018.
She is finally speaking out just before a report from the Department of Justice Inspector General is due Dec. 9 regarding Russia’s alleged interference in the 2016 election, CNN reported.
“It’s almost impossible to describe,” Page told The Daily Beast. “It’s like being punched in the gut. My heart drops to my stomach when I realize he has tweeted about me again.”
As an example of just how low a person so highly positioned can stoop, Page said “the straw that broke the camel’s back” was a fake orgasm Trump acted out while naming her on Oct. 11 at a Minneapolis rally.
"Lisa, oh God I love you Lisa," Trump said, mocking Strzok.
The president of the United States did this to former government workers, having already accused them of treason for having the audacity to think he wasn’t suited for the highest U.S. office.
“I had stayed quiet for years hoping it would fade away, but instead it got worse,” Page told The Daily Beast. “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.”
She said when the president targeted her it was humiliating but also intimidating.
“The president of the United States is calling me names to the entire world. He’s demeaning me and my career. It’s sickening,” Page said. “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,” Page added. “To try to further destroy my life. It never goes away or stops, even when he’s not publicly attacking me.”
Page told The Daily Beast when she initially learned the Inspector General would be questioning her allegedly for violating the Hatch Act with her texts, she wasn’t worried because she knew she hadn’t violated the act, which prohibits employees in the executive branch from certain forms of political activity.
She said very few FBI workers even knew about the investigation until Trump’s former national security adviser, Michael Flynn, pleaded guilty in December 2017 to lying about talks with the Russian ambassador a year earlier.
In short, the White House needed a media distraction, and the investigation into Page for alleged political bias was that distraction, she said.
“So now I have to deal with the aftermath of having the most wrong thing I’ve ever done in my life become public,” she told The Daily Beast. “And that’s when I become the source of the president’s personal mockery and insults.”
Page also gave an example of exactly how the president placing a figurative target on her back has affected her.
“Like, when somebody makes eye contact with me on the Metro, I kind of wince, wondering if it’s because they recognize me, or are they just scanning the train like people do? It’s immediately a question of friend or foe,” she told The Daily Beast. “Or if I’m walking down the street or shopping and there’s somebody wearing Trump gear or a MAGA hat, I’ll walk the other way or try to put some distance between us because I’m not looking for conflict.
“Really, what I wanted most in this world is my life back.”