Individual 1 Spent His Saturday Morning Ranting About the “Russia Hoax”

“Witch Hunt!”

Jacquelyn Martin/AP

Fight disinformation: Sign up for the free Mother Jones Daily newsletter and follow the news that matters.

President Donald Trump is having quite the day on Twitter. After announcing the resignation of his embattled Interior secretary and blasting the “dishonest” media, the president took aim at the “Russia Hoax.”

Referring to a recent Department of Justice inspector general report into attempts to recover text messages sent by former FBI officials Lisa Page and Peter Strzok—both of whom worked on special counsel Robert Mueller’s Russia investigation—Trump wrote, “Wow, 19,000 Texts between Lisa Page and her lover, Peter S of the FBI, in charge of the Russia Hoax, were just reported as being wiped clean and gone.” He added. “Such a big story that will never be covered by the Fake News. Witch Hunt!”

In 2017, it was revealed that Page and Strzok had exchanged text messages critical of Trump during the 2016 campaign. Republicans have used the case to slam the FBI for what they claim is a bureau-wide bias against Trump.

But there’s no evidence supporting Trump’s implication that the messages were deliberately “wiped clean” in order to cover up supposed wrongdoing. In reality, the messages appear to have been lost due to a widespread technical problem within the FBI, according to the inspector general report released Thursday. The report noted that while many of Page and Strzok’s texts were lost, thousands of others were recovered.

WE'LL BE BLUNT:

We need to start raising significantly more in donations from our online community of readers, especially from those who read Mother Jones regularly but have never decided to pitch in because you figured others always will. We also need long-time and new donors, everyone, to keep showing up for us.

In "It's Not a Crisis. This Is the New Normal," we explain, as matter-of-factly as we can, what exactly our finances look like, how brutal it is to sustain quality journalism right now, what makes Mother Jones different than most of the news out there, and why support from readers is the only thing that keeps us going. Despite the challenges, we're optimistic we can increase the share of online readers who decide to donate—starting with hitting an ambitious $300,000 goal in just three weeks to make sure we can finish our fiscal year break-even in the coming months.

Please learn more about how Mother Jones works and our 47-year history of doing nonprofit journalism that you don't find elsewhere—and help us do it with a donation if you can. We've already cut expenses and hitting our online goal is critical right now.

payment methods

WE'LL BE BLUNT

We need to start raising significantly more in donations from our online community of readers, especially from those who read Mother Jones regularly but have never decided to pitch in because you figured others always will. We also need long-time and new donors, everyone, to keep showing up for us.

In "It's Not a Crisis. This Is the New Normal," we explain, as matter-of-factly as we can, what exactly our finances look like, how brutal it is to sustain quality journalism right now, what makes Mother Jones different than most of the news out there, and why support from readers is the only thing that keeps us going. Despite the challenges, we're optimistic we can increase the share of online readers who decide to donate—starting with hitting an ambitious $300,000 goal in just three weeks to make sure we can finish our fiscal year break-even in the coming months.

Please learn more about how Mother Jones works and our 47-year history of doing nonprofit journalism that you don't find elsewhere—and help us do it with a donation if you can. We've already cut expenses and hitting our online goal is critical right now.

payment methods

We Recommend

Latest

Sign up for our free newsletter

Subscribe to the Mother Jones Daily to have our top stories delivered directly to your inbox.

Get our award-winning magazine

Save big on a full year of investigations, ideas, and insights.

Subscribe

Support our journalism

Help Mother Jones' reporters dig deep with a tax-deductible donation.

Donate