As one half of the Strzok/Page love story and the sender of many a text message that made her opposition to Donald Trump quite clear, FBI lawyer Lisa Page is a woman that House investigators would love to talk to.
In fact, so eager are two House committees to speak with Page on the record that they sent a subpoena to her, demanding that she come to Capitol Hill to testify. But while ordinary Americans have to obey such a subpoena or find themselves held in contempt, an FBI lawyer being protected by the Justice Department can apparently feel free to tell Congress to take a hike. How about that!
In a statement released on Tuesday, Page’s attorney Amy Jeffress said that the House Judiciary and Oversight and Government Reform Committees had not given her client enough time to prepare for testimony.
“The Committees have not honored this request [to reschedule],” said Jeffress. “As a result, Lisa is not going to appear for an interview at this time.”
House Republicans are irate, to put it mildly.
House Judiciary Committee Chairman Bob Goodlatte said, “It appears that Lisa Page has something to hide. She has known for months that the House Judiciary Committee has sought her testimony as part of our joint investigation with the Oversight Committee into decisions made by the Justice Department in 2016, and she has no excuse for her failure to appear. Lisa Page is a key witness, and it is critical that she come before our committees to answer questions as part of our investigation.”
“Anti-Trump FBI lawyer Lisa Page is defying a congressional subpoena because she doesn’t want to answer questions or be held accountable,” tweeted Rep. Ron DeSantis. “Pathetic.”
“Lisa Page ignores congressional subpoena, once again showing the double standard,” said Rep. Jim Jordan. “One set of rules for regular Americans, a different set for the Swamp!”
To put it quite plainly, we’ve never seen this level of secrecy and outright obstruction on the part of the American Department of Justice and the FBI. It extends from the current top brass (Rod Rosenstein) down to chief Hillary Clinton/Donald Trump investigators (Peter Strzok) to people who were known to have Andrew McCabe’s ear at the FBI (Lisa Page). Their utter lack of cooperation has been shielded by themselves and the media, under the pretense that House Republicans are simply on a mission to “save the president from justice.” That’s absolute nonsense. Cooperate, testify, and turn over the documents as required by our constitutional separation of powers, and THEN we will see who is “protecting the president.”
And, for that matter, which one!