Crossfire Hurricane A play in 2 Acts -Act the Second

https://dougcollins.house.gov/sites/dougcollins.house.gov/files/Lisa%20Page%20interview%20Day%202.pdf

COMMITTEE ON THE JUDICIARY,
U.S. HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES, WASHINGTON, D.C.
INTERVIEW OF: LISA PAGE -DAY 2
Monday, July 16, 2018
Washington, D.C.
The above matter was held in Room 2141, Rayburn House Office Building, commencing at 11:02 a.m.
[1]COMMITTEE SENSITIVE
Mr. Baker. Okay. The time is 1 minute past 11:00 a.m. on July 16th, continuing from Friday’s session of the transcribed interview of former FBI attorney Lisa Page.
EXAMINATION
BY MR. BAKER:
Q Good morning, Ms. Page, and thank you for agreeing to come back for a second session of questioning. A lot of ground was covered on Friday, so I want to clean up a couple of areas that I had questions on. So I might jump around a little bit. I’m going to try not to be repetitive from what you’ve already answered.
But I wanted to clarify, at a very basic level, sometimes in the media’s reporting you’ve been referred to as an FBI agent. In the truest sense of the word, as an agent relates to a principal, you are an agent of the government. But in FBI parlance, is it correct to say that you’re not an 1811 series investigator special agent?
A I am not.
Q You are, in fact, an attorney and were assigned to the General Counsel’s Office. A That’s correct. Q Okay. You started to get into a little bit on Friday and you articulated
the best you could that –I think you opened the door as to the different types of investigations or how an investigation is opened. It’s my understanding there’s three basic types of investigations: There’s an assessment. Then it moves to predicated investigations,
COMMITTEE SENSITIVE
where you then have preliminary investigation and you have a full investigation. Is that correct?
A That’s correct.
Q And my understanding of the different types of investigations is, on one end of the spectrum, it’s how that case is opened, how maybe credible the information is or how vague the information is. And then on the other end of the spectrum, it’s what type of investigative techniques can be employed in that type of investigation. And-•
A I wouldn’t agree with respect to the substance of the information. It’s not whether it’s vague or credible or not. It’s really an assessment –and, again, I don’t have the standards in front of me, but each level of, sort of, investigative permission affords different levels of tools available.
And so, to the extent you have more information or to the extent the information comes from a particularly credible source, it means that you can open a full investigation and –but really the distinctions between –certainly between a preliminary investigation and a full are a little bit of dancing on the head of a pin. I mean, these are very, sort of, nuanced, subtle. Any credible allegation is sufficient for the FBI to open an investigation and take action for –to sort of generalize broadly.
Q But the assessment would be kind of the lower, , very initial –the information maybe not even relating to a violation of criminal law or national security; it could be proactively –to prevent or to develop information about something the FBI is tasked to investigate?
A That’s correct. I don’t really want to –I would hesitate to go down this path too carefully because there are multiple different types of assessments and different divisions have actually different authorities with respect to assessment, and I am by no means an expert on that. So without having the DIOG in front of me, I would not really be comfortable -•
Q Sure.
A –answering specific questions about -•
Q Sure.
A –what we can do at what level.
Q But at a very basic level, the assessment is kind of the lower tier. You’re limited in the types of investigative techniques you can use in the assessment when you compare that to one of the predicated types, either the PI or the full.
A That is correct.
Q Okay. When you’re talking about a PI or a full, I talked briefly about, you know, the one standard to open on the one end, and then the other end, when you have a PI or a full that’s properly opened, those are the types of investigations where you can use the more sophisticated investigative techniques. Is that correct?
A They’re not always sophisticated, but you can use more tools.
Q Certainly more than you could in the assessment.
A That’s correct.
Q And then one of the most sophisticated techniques would be a court-ordered Title III or a FISC-ordered FISA?
A That’s correct.
Q And those techniques, even though they’re authorized by the FBI’s manual of –that deals with compliance –I believe it’s referred to as the DIOG, domestic investigative operations guidelines, even though you’re working with a validly opened, predicated investigation, when you get to those really extreme, sensitive techniques, the ones that are really intrusive, it’s not just the FBI that decides or somebody in the FBI that decides, hey, we’re going to use this technique. Is that correct?
A That’s correct. With respect to both of the two you describe, both the Title 3 wiretap and a FISC order, not only do you have vast approvals within the FBI itself, both of those tools require high-level approval at theJustice Department. And, of course, with respect to a FISA order, the Attorney General, the Deputy Attorney General, him or herself, has to approve that.
Q Okay. And then so, not only are there multiple approval levels for those type of techniques within the FBI, the Department of Justice also has approval requirements for that at the highest levels, but also there’s court approval required for those. Is that not correct?
A Of course.
Q So it’s fair to say that not one person in the FBI decides,
hey, we’re going to do this sophisticated technique, electronic
surveillance of some sort, in a vacuum. There are levels outside the FBI and even outside the executive branch.
A That’s correct. Certainly, the more intrusive the technique becomes, the greater supervision over that technique that the FBI has and the more approval levels, both within and outside the Department, will fall.
Q There are in many places in the FBI, I believe, opportunities for people that believe that compliance is not being adhered to –there’s many opportunities for people to report compliance concerns. And I believe this DIOG that we referenced has specific requirements for a supervisor that opens a case, if he’s concerned the compliance isn’t being met, there’s opportunities to report if you believe that something is not being adhered to, either in the opening, the reporting, or the use of techniques in an investigation. Is that correct?
A That’s correct.
Q If you can –I don’t think this would be classified if it’s not, don’t answer –what is an IOB violation? A It’s not that it’s classified it’s that I don’t want to misspeak.
Essentially, if there is a compliance violation associated with the activity that the FBI conducts while wearing its intelligence community hat, so it would presumably be classified, but it would be in the conduct of not a criminal investigation but a classified investigation, to the extent there’s an error, for example, an overproduction, you know, we –this is just for example’s sake: We issue a national security letter. We receive back information which is beyond that which we’re permitted to obtain pursuant to a national security letter. If that were to be uploaded into our, sort of, primary database, that would be an overproduction, and that would need to be required to the IOB.
So it doesn’t necessarily speak to the severity or the nature of the compliance incident, but compliance incidents involving the activity we conduct on the intelligence side, on the classified side of the work we do is reported to the IOB and often to other entities depending on whether it pertained to a FISA order or something else.
Q Thank you. That’s very helpful.
So, outside the confines of any particular investigation, there is a mechanism and there are people responsible to receive and look into compliance issues.
A Oh, yes.
Q Okay. During your employment with the FBI, specifically your role with Midterm or the Russia investigation, are you aware of any compliance issues that were raised or even to the level of an IOB violation?
A Not during the period of time in which I was on either investigation, no.
Q Had you heard about -•
A I have since heard –can I consult with counsel? I’m sorry.
Q Absolutely.
[8] [Discussion off the record.]
Ms. Page. Thank you. Upon consultation with FBI counsel, I’m either –I’m not sure whether the answer would call for a classified answer or whether I would be permitted to answer the question fully. But I can say, during the period of time that I was involved in both the Clinton email investigation and the Russia investigation, I am not aware of any compliance incident or event requiring reporting to the IOB.
BY MR. BAKER:
Q Okay. So, during your tenure or at another time, there –without the specifics of the violation, the mechanisms for reporting compliance issues, including IOB violations, was not stymied, stifled -•
A Oh, no, no. ‘They exist. Yes.
Q Okay. And they would be complied with, as far as you know.
A Yes.
Q Okay. The FBI
A I guess I would note, too, that the Department of Justice plays a significant oversight role with respect to what gets reported to the IOB or to the FISC. And so, again, it’s not an issue that exists solely within the FBI’s purview to determine but is often identified by the Department of Justice and then the FBI would follow up with an IOB or other notification as appropriate.
Q And would it be correct to say, in addition to that mechanism, the FBI has their own internal audits of those techniques. The National Security Law Branch and others, the Inspection Division, conducts random inspections of the files that were used to utilize those sophisticated techniques.
A That is correct, yes.
Q Okay.
The FBI, by its very motto, “Fidelity, Bravery, Integrity,”
subscribes to very high ideals. They also have a core value –a list of core values that certainly is not intended to be exhaustive, but what they indicate in the fewest words possible to sort of be the essence and the heart of the FBI: rigorous obedience to the Constitution of the United States; respect for the dignity of all those we protect; compassion, fairness, .uncompromising personal integrity and institutional integrity; accountability by accepting responsibility for our actions and decisions and their consequences; leadership by example, both personal and professional.
Do you believe that everyone, to the best of your knowledge, associated with Midyear Exam and the Russian investigation upheld the FBI’s core values?
A I think so, yes.
Q And do you believe based on your experience as an attorney –and your role of an attorney, if I’m not mistaken, would be to advise the investigators and other members of the team on legal issues, what they could, what they couldn’t do, and potentially compliance issues as well.
A So that is the role of an attorney. I wouldn’t agree that
that was necessarily my role, because I was not on the –as I described, I think, on Friday, I was not on the team in the same way that the other, sort of, members of the investigative team were. I was really –I was supporting the Deputy Director, so I was, in a way, a liaison between the team and, sort of, executive management at the FBI.
So I wouldn’t say that my role certainly in any day-to-day capacity was to provide legal advice to the team.
Q So, in your role as a liaison from the Deputy’s office to the Midyear team, what was your role as a liaison? Did you attend meetings? You relayed information back?
A I did. Both of those things. As I think I described on Friday, part of the value that I tried to add to the Deputy Director’s office was to ensure that he had the most complete information possible at all times. And so I definitely stayed abreast of the investigative activity. To the extent there were disagreements or frustrations with the Department or areas where there might –where a disagreement or other issue might ultimately rise to the Deputy Director’s level, I tried to stay abreast of those as well, keep him sufficiently informed.
Q And while you were assigned attorney adviser, special assistant, what was your title in the Deputy’s office as an OGC rep?
A Counselor special counsel to the Deputy Director.
Q Were you –I mean, you’re answering to the Deputy. You’re still a part of OGC technically, though, right? A Yes. I am a part of OGe. I’m still a lawyer. I’m still, you know, to the extent relevant, covered by the attorney-client
privilege. But my role is to support the Deputy Director. But, to that end, I was in regular, if not daily, contact with the general counsel to sort of ensure that our efforts and information was in sync.
Q But you’re not giving legal advice to the Deputy per se.
A We’re sort of splitting hairs. I may have been, depending on the issue. My role was not necessarily to tell him, this is permissible, this is impermissible. That is really what OGC was there to do. He might ask me, you know, what do you think, and certainly that might result in the conveyance of legal advice. But he has an entire division devoted to that type of activity. I was there more to help him make decisions and, sort of, apply judgment to what it was we were looking at.
I also, because of the unique position, had a macro view of the entire organization. And so I sort of tried to help connect dots that may have seemed otherwise disparate but might ultimately have a relevance with respect to whatever particular issue was in front of us, not just in the Clinton investigation.
Q And if something came your way in this assignment that related to legal advice, you certainly had the resources of the General Counsel’s Office to reach out to or to incorporate in a decision on whatever the legal issue might be.
A That’s correct. And, in fact, that is what I did. So, to the extent –just as an example, if the Deputy Director was reviewing a FI5A and he had a question about the sufficiency of the probable cause, he might ask me my opinion, and I might give it, but, at the end of the day, it would not stop there. We would return it to the General Counsel’s Office. He would consult with Mr. Baker or the deputy general counselor whomever had the substantive information necessary and would get the, sort of, final legal determination from the Office of General Counsel.
Q So the way the General Counsel’s Office is set up, it’s not a lot of general practitioners. It sounds like there’s a lot of very specific specialists. You have national security law people that would know answers to FISA-type questions. You have criminal lawyers that would maybe know answers to just general investigative techniques.
So you would kind of coordinate where a particular question that the Deputy might have might be properly referred to in the General Counsel’s Office.
A That’s exactly right, yes, and to other divisions as well. To the extent it was not a legal question that came up but simply, you know, the Deputy wants more information about this operational plan, I might also reach back into a substantive division to pass that information along.
Q Okay.
You mentioned in your role as a liaison you would go to a lot of meetings, frequent meetings, and report back to the Deputy. Was there disagreement, dissension at these meetings on any particular path to take, either investigatively or prosecuting?
We talked a little bit Friday about the decision to or to not charge in specific statutes. There was this issue of Mr. Comey
drafting this press release and then releasing –doing the press release and then letters to Congress. Was there dissension in meetings about any of these controversial topics, or was everybody, yes, we agree with this? How did that work? A That’s a very broad question. If you are talking specifically about the Clinton email investigation -•
Q Okay.
A Is that
Q For now.
A Okay. So certainly there are, you know, 8 or 10 of us who made up sort of the core group of people who met with Director Comey. There was –I wouldn’t say dissension, but there was the benefit of that group and the comfort that we all with each other, and, in fact, the kind of culture and environment that Director Comey tried to foster absolutely allowed for disagreement, and we were all quite comfortable, I think, expressing our views.
And to the extent somebody said we should take Xstep and somebody disagreed, it was entirely common for that group of individuals to openly disagree with one another, to do so in front of the Director, in the hopes that the best answer would sort of rise to the top.
Q And is that how it ultimately was decided? Is that how a decision was decided? There was discussion, there was consensus, the best decision rose to the top? Was there ever a vote and ust simple majority
A This is the FBI. It’s not a majority rule. The Director would make an ultimate decision. So, no, I am not aware of anything ever being based on majority yote. It’s the Director’s –he leads the organization. He’s the one who’ d ultimately be accountable for those decisions.
But the people that I worked with and that group of people who would regularly meet with the Director all unquestionably felt free to voice their views.
Q Do you recall Director Comey ever taking a position that was contrary to the consensus of the group?
A I wouldn’t say II consensus. II I don’t think that that’s a fair statement. I was not present for the meeting in October when he decided to send –to notify Congress of his decision to reopen the Clinton email investigation, but I am aware that there was disagreement among the team. There was not a consensus that everybody agreed it should be done. People had different views about whether we should and whether we shouldn’t and the timing of it if we did in the first place. And ultimately it was Director Comey’s decision to make.
Q Okay. Thank you.
[14]BY MR. SOMERS:
Q Could we back up for a second? Art asked a pretty compound question. Was there dissent, disagreement, however you would characterize it, with investigative techniques on the Midyear Exam?
A Investigative techniques? That’s a really broad question.
Q Whether a search warrant should be used?
A Oh. So this was before I was involved in the investigation,
[15] but it’s my understanding –it’s not a disagreement within the FBI, but there were lots and lots and lots of disagreements between the FBI and the Department.
Generally, I can’t think of anything in particular that would have been FBI-specific with respect to, like, this agent wants to take step X and this agent –somebody else wants to take step Y.
But, certainly, my understanding is, at the outset of the investigation –again, I was not personally involved, but there was a great deal of discussion between the FBI and the Department with respect to whether to proceed, obtain the server which housed the bulk of Secretary Clinton’s emails, pursuant to consent or pursuant toa subpoena or other compulsory process.
Q And was that dissent between the FBI and the Department?
A That’s correct. Yes.
Q And what was the FBI’s preference?
A To obtain it pursuant to compulsory process.
Q The server?
A I’m sorry?
Q The server?
A The server, yes. Sorry.
Q And how about –were there any other disagreements between the Department and the A Oh, my gosh. I mean Q –FBI on investigative techniques? A Yes, all the time. In a vacuum, it’s hard to just come up
[16]with them off the top of my head.
Q Was the FBI being told that it couldn’t use certain investigative techniques by the Department?
A “It couldn’t use.” Not –I’m trying to think of specific examples. I’m sorry. Not that –to the extent there would be a disagreement, r don’t think it would ever be quite that strident. think it would be the view of the Department that it was strategically advantageous.
Oh. Well, so here is an example. We had –but this is not about the type of process to obtain, but there were, r think, months of disagreement with respect to obtaining the Mills and Samuelson laptops.
So Heather Mills and –Cheryl Mills and Heather Samuelson were both lawyers who engaged in the sorting. Once it had been identified that Secretary Clinton had these emails –I’m guessing it’s pursuant to the ForA request, but I don’t really know –she –well, our understanding is that she asked her two lawyers to take the bulk of the 60,000 emails and to sort out those which were work-related from those which were personal and to produce the work-related ones to the State Department.
They did so. That 30,000 is sort of the bulk of the emails that we relied on in order to conduct the investigation, although we found other emails a jillion other places.
We, the FBI, felt very strongly that we had to acquire and attempt to review the content of the Mills and Samuelson laptops because, to the extent the other 30,000 existed anywhere, that is the best place
(17)that they may have existed. And notwithstanding the fact that they had been deleted, you know, we wanted at least to take a shot at using, you know, forensic recovery tools in order to try to ensure that, in fact, the sorting that occurred between –or by Mills and Samuelson was done correctly and -•
Q Sorry.
A No, that’s okay.
Q It was –is that –for lack of a better term, is it usual to rely on the target of an investigation to provide evidence against the target?
A Well, that happens. That’s not uncommon. I mean, in white-collar cases in particular, issuing subpoenas to the target, even though –particularly if it’s, like, a corporate target, that’s certainly a way to do it.
You’re misunderstanding a little bit, though, because that sort and all of that activity took place before there was a criminal investigation. So that activity is what –the testimony that we received, the, sort of, evidence we received, is that the State Department reaches out to Secretary Clinton when they discover, “We don’t have your emails on a State Department system. Do yo.u have your emails?” And the answer is, “Yes.” And the State Department, rather than the State Department itself conducting that analysis of whether or not there was –or whether these emails were work-related or not, deferred to Secretary Clinton to do that.
So this long precedes any FBI investigation or any FBI
involvement.
BY MR. BREITENBACH:
Q But didn’t you say that months went by before you made the determination as to whether to access those laptops -•
A No. I’m sorry.
Q –though consent or through -•
A Yes.
Q –compulsory process?
A But that’s –so we have to –we’re talking about two different events here.
Back in 2013 –I don’t remember when –this is before there was any FBI investigation. When there is first an inquiry by the State Department into why do we have no Secretary Clinton emails that go to Secretary Clinton herself, that precipitates Mills and Samuelson conducting this sorting activity and producing to the State Department, here are the emails which are work-related. Produce them to FOIA, produce them to Congress, wherever they went. I have no idea. We had nothing to do with this –we, the FBI.
Skip ahead to February/March of 2016, right? The criminal investigation has now been open for 6 or 7 months. We discover that –we discover these facts, right? These facts were not known to us. We don’t know how she first did the sorting for the State Department. We discover these facts.
We go to the Department and say: We need to get these laptops. We need to try to get in them and review them and see if, in fact, there are other emails which either are work-related or, potentially –what we were really looking for –other emails which would speak to, you know, give some indicia of her intent with respect to why she set up this server and whether it was intended to mishandle classified and all of that.
That back-and-forth starting February/Marchish of 2016 and going through, I’d say, June of 2016 is the disagreement I was referring to. So that’s a disagreement between us, the FBI, and the DOJ with respect to why we needed to get these laptops and how to get these laptops.
And what the FBI believed –and there’s copious texts about this because it was a, sort of, ongoing argument –was that we had to at least attempt to get them. Even if we were unsuccessful, even if a court determined that they were attorney-client work product or opinion work product, which is what the Department was concerned about, we couldn’t credibly close the investigation without having tried to get into these laptops and to have reviewed –see if any additional emails could be recovered and to question Mills and Samuelson about how they engaged in that sort in order to see whether it seemed righteous and, you know, proper or whether there was anything, kind of, nefarious or questionable about it.
The Department’s view for months was that we would not be able to get into them, a court would not, sort of, grant us access, so we shouldn’t bother trying. And that was a source of –I wouldn’t say constant conflict but regular conflict every time it came up. Because
[20]quite early on we started pushing the Department to reach out to Mills’ lawyer and –Mills and Samuelson’s lawyer to sort of start the process of trying to get into these laptops, and the Department was very reluctant to do so for the reasons that I’ve described.
Q So you had the opportunity, then, conceivably, to execute a search warrant –if you’re using the timetable you had mentioned –back in February of 2016. You could have executed a search warrant and obtained those -•
A Well, not without the Department, right? The Department has to we cannot on our own, the FBI cannot execute a search warrant without approval from the Justice Department.
Q So was the Department pushing back on obtaining compulsory process to obtain those laptops? Because months, you say, go by. mean, in your timetable from February to June, what is that -•
A Ish. Let me just be
Q –4 to 5 months? Four or 5 months passes before you are able to gain access to those laptops.
A To the best of my recollection, yes. It’s either February or March. I just want to put a little bit of hedge in it, because I’m not 100-percent certain.
But I know that the conversations about whether to obtain the
laptops and how to obtain the laptops is one that is ongoing. It is
one that ultimately rises to the head of the OED, the Office of
Enforcement Operations, which is the unit at the Justice Department
who would have to approve a warrant on a lawyer –because, of course, these were all lawyer laptops. It rose to that individual, it rose to George Toscas, over the course of this 3 months or so.
But, yes, there was an ongoing disagreement about whether there was utility to obtain the laptops and, if so, how to obtain them.
Q So, in your experience, what may happen when a subject of an investigation is aware that the FBI is attempting to obtain evidence yet the FBI does not obtain it and months pass? What are the possibilities?
A Obviously, there’s the risk of destruction of evidence. I will note, however, that it’s my recollection that those laptops had been sequestered by Mills and Samuelson’s lawyer. So it’s not –I don’t believe that they were in the possession of Mills and Samuelson once we, sort of, started raising this question with the Department. It’s my recollection that the Department informed Mills and Samuelson’s lawyer that we had an interest in these and that she took possession of them.
Q So destruction of evidence. Can you imagine any other possibilities if you fail to obtain the evidence and the subject is aware of it?
Ms. Jeffress. I’m not sure what the question is.
Ms. Page. Yeah, I’m not sure. I’m sorry.
BY MR. BREITENBACH:
Q Any other possibilities in the –in terms of a subject being aware that evidence is attempting to be obtained by the FBI yet the FBI does not obtain that compulsory.
A I think destruction of evidence is the big one.
Q And you were never aware that destruction of evidence occurred?
A Not to my knowledge, no.
Q Thank you.
BY MR. SOMERS:
Q Okay. Then the second part of Art’s question was disagreement about prosecutive techniques between the FBI and DOJ. Were there any disagreements about techniques for prosecution?
A No, because nobody thought that the evidence could sustain a prose~ution. 50-•
Q What about, sort of –I guess, what about impaneling a grand jury? Was there disagreement about whether a grand jury should be impaneled?
A A grand jury was impaneled. Q But was there disagreement prior to the impaneling about timing?
A . Oh. I’m not aware. Q What about discussion about the statutes that should be charged or could be charged?
A No, I don’t think so. I mean, it was always fairly self-evident that we were looking at mishandling statutes. And, again, the evidence was just never there to sufficiently support, really, a prosecution. I mean, I think they even looked at Federal Records Act violations they, meaning the Department –and there
was never sufficient evidence to support any criminal prosecution under any statute. Mr . Breitenbach. Was a grand jury impaneled for the purposes of the email investigation?
Ms. Page. Yes. That’s my understanding.
Mr. Breitenbach. Okay.
Ms. Page. I’m sorry. Can I consult with counsel for a second?
Mr. Breitenbach. Yes.
[Discussion off the record.]
Ms. Page. Sorry.
Mr. Breitenbach. Are you aware of whether evidence was ever presented to the grand jury in terms of adjudicating a decision? Ms. Page. Well, wait. “In terms of adjudicating adecision.” Are you —
Ms. Bessee. Can I address?
So I will instruct her not to answer any questions that go into the process of the grand jury. He can rephrase the question, but if it goes into the process of the grand jury, you will not be able to answer.
Ms. Page. Well, why don’t I answer –I can’t speak to whether any –what activity was conducted before the grand jury. I can answer that no case was presented to the grand jury because that would have been an abuse of the grand jury.
The Department is required to at least believe that you have
probable cause in order –probable cause that a crime has been
committed. I’m sorry, that’s not true. The Department’s rules require that to present a case before the grand jury you have to have a reasonable belief that the case can be proven beyond a reasonable doubt. And we did not have that belief with respect to the Clinton email investigation.
And so we would not have put the case before the grand jury, essentially presented all of the evidence that we had collected to date, because, it’s my I assessment –although, again, this is just me, personally, talking based on my prior experience as a prosecutor, not with respect to what was conducted in this investigation. But it’s my assessment that that would’ve been an inappropriate use of grand jury, because the prosecutors putting in that evidence would not have believed that there was a crime to be charged.
Does that make sense? That was a little bit tortured.
BY MR. BREITENBACH:
Q Yes. But, as the FBI, did you make a recommendation or not as to whether to present it to a grand jury? A I don’t know. Q So it would’ve been the Department -•A So let me clarify one thing. The grand jury was used to
obtain evidence. Right? So there are certain things, for example, like a subpoena of records, which would require the impaneling ofa grand jury and using tools before the grand jury in order to obtain evidence. That occurred.
I am not, both substantively and also on advice of FBI counsel,
in a position to discuss what type of evidence was obtained by the grand jury.
What I can say is that I do not believe there was ever any disagreement with respect to whether we needed to ask the grand jury to return an indictment. It would have been inappropriate to have presented all of the evidence collected, whether by grand jury subpoena or any other tool –consent, search warrants, testimony, you know, of other witness, interviews of witnesses. It would not have been appropriate to ask the grand jurors to return an indictment or to review the weight of the evidence where we did not believe that that case was prosecutable.
Q But was that the FBI’s decision to make? A No, it was the Department’s decision to make. It was the decision made by the Department. Q At the end of the day, you’re saying it was the decision of the Department
A Yes.
Q prosecutors not to present this to the grand jury for an indictment. A That is correct, yes. Q Thank you.
BY MR. PARMITER: Q Can I ask a couple of additional questions regarding, sort of, the internal discussions and what was discussed? Was there ever, in your experience, any discussion at any of the
meetings involving Midyear about whether the act of setting up the server itself was problematic or whether that showed any level of
intent?
A I don’t know.
Q But you were never -• you never experienced anything like
that.
A I don’t recall being present for a conversation like that.

But, also, to the extent it may have occurred –this investigation was opened in July of 2015. I don’t become involved in it until February of 2016. So, to the extent there were questions about that, they may have been resolved before I was involved.
Q Okay.
How often, in your experience, does the FBI Director or the Deputy Director in the course of their ordinary duties access or review or, you know, have dealings with classified information?
A Every single day. Q Every day. Okay. So what –by being on a private server, would you agree classified information is not in its proper place?
A By being on any unclassified system, whether private or government, classified information should not have traversed it. That’s correct.
Q So, given your answers to both of those questions, do you think that, you know, assuming the Deputy Director or the Director had set up a private server of their own, just hypothetically, to, you know, transact government business, all of their business, would you say it would be inevitable that classified information would pass over that server?
A No”, sir. So”, at the FBI and at the State Department”, we have three separate systems for each level of classification. So whether that system existed at the State Department or whether it existed on somebody’s private server”, inevitably if there was –if it was somebody’s private server”, lots of unclassified government business would traverse that system in the same way it does for”, you know”, the FBI’s unclassified system or the State Department’s unclassified system”, but there’s nothing inevitable about whether or if classified information would traverse that unclassified system.
That certainly may happen occasionally on the FBI system”, on an unclassified FBI-run system. It’s called a spill. It’s an inadvertent”, sort of”, passage of classified information on a system in which it doesn’t belong. But the same is true if you’re dealing with Top Secret information and it traverses the Secret side; that’s also a spill.
So it’s sort of indistinguishable whether the system itself is classified or unclassified”, only in that it’s not authorized to handle classified information.
Q So would you –so”, okay. So is your answer is that if”, you know”, a Cabinet Secretary or the FBI Director was using a private server to conduct all of their business that it’s not inevitable that classified information would pass through that server?
A If they were using it to conduct every single thing they did.
But it’s not –my understanding is that the Secret side was used for Secret business and the TS side was used for TS business. So if every single thing they did -•
Q That’s at the FBI~ though~ correct?
A Even at the State Department~ it’s my understanding. mean~ it was a much more cumbersome system~ in part because the principals are constantly allover the world so the access to these other classified systems is less readily available and so it’s~ sort of~ more cumbersome~ it’s~ sort of~ harder.
But if the question is~ if every single thing that the FBI Director –if all of the FBI Director’s business was conducted on an unclassified system~ whether FBI-run or privately run~ then~ yes~ it is true~ there would be classified information there.
But those facts as you presented them are not my understanding of what occurred~ obviously~ either at the FBI or at the State Department.
Mr. Meadows. Can I ask one clarifying question~ Lisa?
It appears~ based on documents that we have~ that there was a conscious decision in the MYE to go down one avenue in terms of prosecution or potential prosecution~ and that is with the retention of classified information on a private server~ not the disclosure of classified information.
And~ based on the documents we have~ it looks like everybody
focused on the retention but no one ever pursued the disclosure. Why
was that made?
Ms. Page. I
Mr. Meadows. And would you agree with that characterization?
Ms. Page. I’m not positive. That’s the thing that I hesitated about. So I’m not sure that I –those were really activities that would have been handled at a lower level than I was involved in. These would have been the discussions —
Mr. Meadows. Right. In most of the documents, the caselaw that they were looking at only dealt with retention, which, actually, disclosure is a bigger deal from a national security threat. And yet it didn’t appear that anybody looked at that, based on the documents we’ve reviewed.
Ms. Page. So my guess –and this is –I’m speculating here just based on my knowledge of what the statutes require –is that disclosure requires intent. And so, particularly when we charge disclosure cases, it’s often in the context, for example, of a media leak. Right? It’s somebody who had possession of the information and disclosed it to somebody who was not authorized to have it. That’s what those disclosure cases look like.
And what was occurring on Secretary Clinton’s server is all people who were righteously entitled to the information and who had a need to know it and who were using that information in the execution of their duties, but it was occurring on a system that wasn’t appropriate for it. So I think that’s why the focus was on retention.
Mr. Meadows. And one more, and then I’ll yield back.
We have information from the inspector general of the
intelligence community that, I guess, initiated this entire investigation –they were the ones that came before you –that there were anomalies that would suggest that there was copies of every email going to a third party.
And I know you heard that in the hearing the other day, but we’ve had substantial conversations with them. Is this news to you today?
Ms. Page. It is. When I heard it in the hearing, it was –maybe I had heard it one other time just with respect to, like, news things, but it was completely baffling to me.
Mr. Meadows. Yeah. 50–
Ms. Page. I don’t understand at all what that’s a reference to. I do know that we gave the server –again, I’m not a technical person, so this is going to be a little bit tortured here —
Mr. Meadows. Right.
Ms. Page. but that we took exhaustive efforts to look at whether there were any other intrusions, whether there was any exfiltration —
Mr. Meadows. And you’re saying they found none. Ms. Page. Correct –whether there was any exfiltration of data and Mr. Meadows. Well, we know that some –but it was basically in the IG’s report on how that came to pass.
So, I guess, why would the investigative team not have had multiple interviews with Mr. Rucker, who brought it to the FBI’s attention originally?
Ms. Page. I
Mr. Meadows. Because, according to the IG, you never interviewed him and never interviewed them other than the initial conversation that brought it. Why would that have —
Ms. Page. So I can’t speak to that, because I don’t know whether he –I’m relying on your representation that he was not interviewed, but I also don’t know whether he ever came to the FBI during the pendency of the investigation and provided that allegation. If he had —
Mr. Meadows. Well, that was the whole reason it was opened up, is my understanding, was him coming. They get it, they come to the FBI. And so you’re saying that’s not the case?
Ms. Page. I don’t –I am really trying —
Mr. Meadows. Or that’s not your understanding?
Ms. Page. That’s not my understanding.
Mr. Meadows. So how did this whole MYE start if it wasn’t from the Ms. Page. No, no. Mr. Meadows. –inspector Ms. Page. So my understanding –and this is –I am way out on
a limb here, because this is not stuff I was involved in. But my understanding is that the IC IG did refer the existence of the server to the FBI, but that was because of the existence of classified information on that server, not because of any anomalous activity, not because of potential intrusion activity. Because it’s not my understanding that the IC IG conducted any sort of forensic analysis
like that.
My understanding is that~ once it was made evident during the course of~ I think, the FOIA production or maybe the production to Congress that there was some classified information which existed on a private email server, it got referred to the IC IG for those purposes, not related to intrusive activity.
Mr. Meadows. So what you’re telling me, it would surprise you to know today that~ if there were anomalies, that the inspector general’s forensic team found those before it was referred to the FBI?
Ms. Page. That’s correct. I’m not sure –Mr. Meadows. Would that –if that is indeed the fact, would that be a major concern to you?
Ms. Page. It would be a concern that we didn’t know that or that that wasn’t part of what they told us when they made the referral, but less so~ sir, honestly because our forensic investigators are so phenomenal that~ notwithstanding whatever the IC IG mayor may not have conveyed, I know we looked extensively at this question.
Because that was a serious question. And to the extent that a foreign government or even a criminal outlet had had access to Secretary Clinton’s private email server, that would have been something we cared very much about. And it’s my understanding that there was no evidence that would have supported that kind of conclusion.
Mr. Meadows. I yield back.
BY MR. BAKER:
Q Regardless of how phenomenal forensic investigators might be, is it still possible that an extremely sophisticated foreign intelligence service could penetrate a server, could extract documents, could do a number of things without leaving a single forensic footprint?
A It’s pretty –I mean, everything is possible, but it’s unlikely. I think Friday’s indictments are revelatory of that. You don’t get better than the GRU, and yet we have identified by name the people involved in theDNC hacking. So I think it’s quite unlikely.
Q Okay.
Are you –following up on what the Congressman was saying, are you familiar with a private entity, privately financed, using private forensic resources, for lack of a better word, went looking for some of the emails from Secretary Clinton’s server, her network, and, in fact, found at least one document on a foreign server?
A I don’t know what you’re referring to, no.
Q Okay.
Mr. Breitenbach. We were produced information indicating that

Mr. Strzok had indicated in an email that at least one Secret email
was accessed by a foreign party. Are you aware of that?
Ms. Page. That may be true. I’m just not personally aware of
that.
BY MR. PARMITER:

Q I believe on Friday, in discussing the statute that you were discussing, I believe, with Congressman Ratcliffe –it was 793(f) of Title 18 –you had said that that statute was deemed by DOJ to be unconstitutionally vague. Is that correct?
A No. The “gross negligence” that –the “gross negligence” standard in 793(f), it was their assessment that it was unconstitutionally vague, yes.
Q Were you involved in discussions about, you know, its vagueness?
A I don’t believe I was, no.
Q Do you have any idea of why they believed it was unconstitutionally vague?
A I mean, I presume they looked at caselaw in which it had been applied. I really don’t know. I mean, I’m –I am confident that it was based on their own, sort of, research in consultation with others, but I don’t have personal knowledge about what the Department did in order to come to that conclusion.
Q Okay.
Speaking of –so did you do or did the OGE do their own evaluation of the statute, or did you just rely on DOJ’s assessment? A I don’t know. I did not. Q Okay. A I can tell you that. Q Speaking of caselaw, are you aware whether or not that
statute has been used in military prosecutions or the frequency with which it was used in civilian prosecutions? I know you had said once in 99 years, but
A I think that there –this is straining my memory now, but I think that there may have been one UCMJ, Uniform Court of Military Justice
Q Code of -•
A –Code of Military Justice –thank you –one UCMJ case in which it was charged, but, again, if my memory serves –so I may get this wrong, but if my memory serves, the defendant in that case had actually engaged in far more nefarious and suspicious activity, and so it was a plea down to that, right? So if you’re pleading to something, then you don’t really need to worry about –I mean, if it’s unconstitutional, it’s still unconstitutional.
But it was not the case –again, my recollection is that it was somebody who had a hoard of classified information and then, when confronted, tried to destroy the classified information –sort of, again, the indicia of knowledge and criminal intent that you will sometimes see.
So, if I’m not mistaken, there was one UCMJ case, but I think that’s it.
Q So, speaking of a hoard of classified information, do you mean information that had been –that was hard copies of physical documents?
A Hard copies and I think even, like –if I’m remembering right, and I could be mixing this up with another case, but, like, a thumb drive of classified information that they were not authorized to have. So both hard copy and digital classified documents.
Q Do you believe -•[Phone ringing.]
Ms. Page. Go ahead, please.
BY MR. PARMITER:
Q Just, you know, your own perspective on this, do you believe that what would be more vulnerable, classified material on a computer server where it’s not supposed to be or hard copies of classified material at someone’s house?
A Well, if you’re talking about more vulnerable to a cyber attack, then obviously you need a computer in order for that to occur.
Q Okay.
Do you –sort of, going further down the line of, you know, whether 793(f) in particular and the “gross negligence” standard in particular are unconstitutionally vague, I mean, do you think that DOJ views that as sort of a dead statute that won’t be charged anymore?
A I do.
Q Are you aware whether or not -•
A I mean, just the “gross negligence” part of it. I don’t have it in front of me to –but –and, as I said last week” I’m by no means an expert.
Thank you. Go ahead.
Q So are you aware of whether or not the Bureau ever sought or obtained any sort of compulsory process, whether it’s a search warrant or something else” on the basis of 793(f) in particular? A I think so, but that would not have to have been the “gross negligence” prong. I think they could have relied on the second prong
of
Q On (f)2 right there -•
A Right.
Q -• as opposed to (f)l?
A Yeah. And, again, I don’t know what basis -• I shouldn’t

have answered that question. I am speaking out of turn. I do not know what statutes were alleged to the extent the Department sought compulsory process. I have no idea, so I shouldn’t answer that. Q Okay.
BY MR. BREITENBACH: Q If we were to tell you, though, that the search warrant was predicated on 793, is that something that would be normal, to base a search warrant and predicate a search warrant on a statute that the Bureau is being told is unconstitutional?
A You’re misunderstanding. So 793(f) has two parts to it. The second part –so the first is, okay, whoever being entrusted with having lawful possession or control of any document relating tothe national defense, one, through gross negligence permits it to be removed or, two, having knowledge of the same, that it has been illegally removed, shall be fined blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.
So there would be nothing inappropriate for them to rely on the second prong of 793(f), which is regularly charged and is a perfectly common statute with respect to mishandling cases. There would be nothing inappropriate with respect to relying on the second prong of 793(f), in my view.
Q What are some of the factors that might rise to the level of “gross negligence,” in your opinion?
A I don’t know. I have done absolutely no research or review of this. I’m not in a position to answer that.
Q Did Mr. McCabe ever ask you that as his lawyer?
A He did not.
Q Do you know whether Mr. Baker ever conducted any independent analysis on the factors that might have met a “gross negligence” charge?
A I don’t know.
But, at the end of the day, this is the Department’s determination. I mean, it is up to the Department to determine whether or not we have sufficient evidence to charge a case. So, even hypothetically, to the extent the FBI thought, you know, we have infinite evidence to support charge A, if the Department disagrees, the Department is going to have the final determination because they are the prosecutors. 50-•
Q But if the FBI is not aware of the particular factors that might be available in meeting that standard, then how would it know whether to recommend to the Department to obtain any type of prosecution based on that standard?
A I mean, the FBI has to –necessarily has to rely on the Department’s assessment of what’s legally supportable under the law. So there’s nothing inappropriate about that sort of reliance.
I’m not saying that no research was conducted. I’m saying that
I person~lly didn’t do any. And to the extent it was conducted, I’m just not aware of it as I sit here today.
Mr. Meadows. So let me ask you a clarifying question. Because I think this was an unusual case where Loretta Lynch, the AG, said that she was going to be independent of it and that she was going to leave it up to the FBI.
So, if you did no research and from a “grossly negligent” standpoint, how would you make the decision to prosecute or not if she was being independent of that?
Ms. Page. So, sir, I think that what she said was that she was going to leave it up to the career prosecutors, not up to the FBI. So, when she did her, kind of, half-recusal, she said that she was going to defer to the recommendations of the career prosecutors in the case.
Mr. Meadows. So what you’re saying is that she halfway recused herself but not really because there was other DOJ officials that were weighing in on that?
Ms. Page. I’m sorry, I should have been more clear. I can’t speak to the recusal and whether it was appropriate or inappropriate or necessary —
Mr. Meadows. No, but your characterization -•
Ms. Page. Oh, okay.
Mr. Meadows. And I agree it’s a half-recusal. Because, at this point –so are you saying that it was prosecutors at DOJ that made the decision on the “grossly negligent” versus “extremely careless” narrative?
Ms. Page. No.
Mr. Meadows. Or was that the FBI? Ms. Page. No, no, no. So, I’m sorry, I understand your question now.
With respect to whether a charge could be sustained under the “gross negligence” statute, that’s a determination made by the Department.
With respect to Mr. Comey’s July 5th statement, when he –in his first draft of the statement back in May, he used the word “gross negligence. ” I don’t know whether he used it intending to rely on its legal definition or not.
With respect to the statement, we, the FBI, felt like it would be confusing and misleading to use the word “gross negligence” when the information that we had received from the Department was that there was no charge sustainable under the “gross negligence” statute. And so we, the FBI, omitted the “gross negligence” words in his press conference statement and moved up the paragraph that already contained the “extremely careless” language into a different spot in his speech.
Mr. Meadows. So, Lisa, why would you change that within 2 days of –you know, you admitted the other day, on I think it was May the 4th, where you said now there was real pressure to get the politics out of it. And then we know within days that it was changed in what we call the exoneration letter. So why would that have changed at that particular point? Do you see how it looks bad?
Ms. Page. I do. But –so it’s the –that’s just when we
had –we, the whole team, had received the draft. Right? So the Director –and I don’t remember the exact date —
Mr. Meadows. But you received the draft before the text message that says, oh, my gosh, now he’s the nominee. And so you had actually received it. We’ve got documents —
Ms. Page. Is that right? I just don’t remember the dates exactly, sir.
Mr. Meadows. And so receiving –it was not after that. You got that, and then all of a sudden within 48 hours it’s changed. And as a reasonable person, you look, well, there’s this statement and then all of a sudden it was changed. And you’re saying that that -had nothing to do with it?
Ms. Page. Yeah, I don’t –I’m not sure I’m totally following you, sir. I’m sorry.
Mr. Meadows. Okay. Well, I’ll be clear -•
Ms. Page. I’m sorry.
Mr. Meadows. because I want you to follow.
Ms. Page. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Mr. Meadows. And you know that I’ve appreciated your willingness to help. When you said that we had to get politics out of it and you changed —
Ms. Page. The pressure. I think what I said was that -•
Mr. Meadows. –the pressure ramped up.
Ms. Page. now that it was a two-person race –I’m going to try to find the text itself. But now that it was a two-person race,
the pressure to finish it had sort of increased.
Mr. Meadows. Right. 50 the memo was May 2nd.
Ms. Page. Okay.
Mr. Meadows. Your text message that we’ve got to clear this up was May 4.
Ms. Page. Okay.
Mr. Meadows. And then we know it was changed by May 6. And that’s a real problematic timeframe that would indicate that all of a sudden we’ve got to get this cloud from over, you know —
Ms. Page. Oh, I see.
Mr. Meadows. –Hillary Clinton and we better change –and it’s just –it looks suspicious.
Ms. Page. I see what you’resaying, sir. I don’t know if this is reassuring at all, but the decision to change the statement, to omit the “gross negligence” language from the statement, was actually not either me or Pete’s recommendation. It was another lawyer. I don’t know if this is any consolation, but —
Mr. Meadows. Yeah. We’ve got the email chains. 50 who was the other lawyer?
Ms. Page. I’m–
Mr. Meadows. That’s a closed case. You should be able ,to tell us. Ms. Page. I have been told by the FBI that people, other than myself, who are G5-1Ss, we’re not, sort of, providing that. Mr. Meadows. 50 you’re saying this is someone lower than a G5-1S
that made that kind of decision? Ms. Page. Well, it’s not a decision; it’s just legal advice, right? 50 there were a group of us –Mr. Meadows. You’re saying someone lower than a G5-1S make a legal decision Ms. Page. No. It was a G5-1S. It’s not lower than. It was a G5-1S. So we had received —
Mr. Meadows. So was it Ms. Moyer?
Ms. Page. We had received the draft of the statement. A group of us had gotten together in order to consolidate our comments so that we were not providing back to the chief of staff to the Director four separate drafts that they had to now reconcile.
Mr. Meadows. Right.
Ms. Page. So the four of us got together. We were sort of reviewing it, sort of, step by step. And the recommendation was: don’t think that we should use this phrase, “gross negligence,” because it has an actual legal term.
And it was our collective understanding that the Department did not think that –and we agreed –that there was not sufficient evidence to support both”gross negligence” and that, more importantly, it was not a sustainable statute because it was unconstitutionally vague and never charged.
And so we, really, sort of, as a collective but on recommendation of counsel, removed that language and moved up the “extremely careless” paragraph.
Mr. Ratcliffe. Ms. Page, let me ask youa question. How well do you know Jim Comey?
Ms. Page. How well do I know Jim Comey?
Mr. Ratcliffe. Yeah.
Ms. Page. I mean, he’s not my personal friend, but I’ve been in a lot of meetings with him.
Mr. Ratcliffe. Did any of the other folks that you’re referencing in connection with making the change have more prosecutorial experience than Jim Comey?
Ms. Page. No.
Mr. Ratcliffe. As someone that knows Jim Comey, is he a person that chooses his words carefully?
Ms. Page. He is, yeah. But I
Mr. Ratcliffe. Would he throw around a term like “gross negligence” not really meaning gross negligence?
Ms. Page. In this case, I actually think so, sir, but only because it’s a term that obviously he was familiar with in the statute, but as DAG I am certain he would not have ever seen such a case. And the truth of the matter is 793(f) is not necessarily a particularly controversial statute; it’s one that’s used with some regularity. And so I’m not sure, as I sit here today, how familiar with the detail and the specifics of 793(f) he would have been.
So my guess is he’s trying to use a term that makes sense, that has sort of a commonsense feel to it, which “gross negligence” does and obviously appears in the statute. But it was sort of our assessment that to use that phrase, because it does have a legal meaning, but then to not charge gross negligence, as we knew it was not supportable, would just be confusing.
Mr. Ratcliffe. But you knew it was not supportable because the Department of Justice told you that it wouldn’t be supportable.
Ms. Page. That’s correct, sir.
Mr. Ratcliffe. So you accepted that as the basis for which you wanted to make that change? Ms. Page. That’s correct. Mr. Meadows. I think we’re out of time, but one last question
real quickly. So you made that determination without having interviewed the last 17 witnesses and Ms. Clinton?
Ms. Page. Yes, sir, because the legal determination wouldn’t have been affected by the factual –the facts, sort of, that may have come out of those investigations, right?
So let’s assume things are going swimmingly and, in fact, all 17 of those witnesses admit, “We did it, it was on purpose, we totally wanted to mishandle classified information,” gross negligence would still have been off the table because of the Department’s assessment that it was vague. We would have other crimes to now charge, but gross negligence would not have been among them.
Mr. Meadows. Thank you.
[Recess.]
[12:18 p.m.] Ms. Kim. We’ll go back on the record. The time is 12:18. Thank you for being here, Ms. Page.
EXAMINATION
BY MS. KIM:
Q Where you left off that discussion with Mr. Meadows, I just want to read you back testimony that you gave last week and see if that is responsive to the question.
So you said it was the FBI team’s understanding that, quote, “we neither had sufficient evidence to charge gross negligence nor had it ever been done because the Department viewed it as constitutionally vague.”
Is that correct?
A That’s correct.
Q And so you said that: When we saw the term gross negligence in the Director’s statements, we were concerned that it would be confusing to leave it in there because it was our understanding that we did not have sufficient evidence nor the sort of constitutional basis to charge gross negligence.
Is that correct?
A Correct.
Q And so you said what you actually did was you didn’t change
the language. You –and this is me directly quoting you. “We didn’t actually change gross negligence to extremely careless. We removed the gross negligence language.”
Extremely careless had already appeared in that draft, so it was Director Comey’s language, was it not?
A That’s correct.
Q And we moved that draft up earlier –we moved that paragraph earlier in the draft.
So it was not a substitution. It was simply an omission of the phrase gross negligence because the legal team believed it would be confusing.
Is that correct?
A That’s correct.
Q Thank you.
Ms. Page, there have been some other representations made about your testimony last week already in the press.
I think one representation that has been made to the press is that there was an inconsistency in the way that you read a text versus the way that Mr. Strzok explained the text.
I would like to read your testimony about that text to you. The text I’m talking about is the “menace” text?
A Okay.
Q So you stated when you were confronted with the text: “Well, I’m not certain, to be honest with you. I think it’s Donald Trump, but the reason I’m hesitating is because this is so close in time to the opening of the Russia investigation that the concern that we all had was there was a member of his campaign colluding with Russia was so great that I’m not –I’m not 100 percent positive that I can split
those.”
Do you recognize that as your testimony from last week?
A Yes.
Q Mr. Strzok, when asked about that same text, stated: “Sir,
my understanding of the word ‘menace’ and the use of ‘menace’ was the broad context of the Government of Russia’s attempts to interfere with our election. To the extent those allegations involved credible information that members of the Trump campaign might be actively colluding, I see that as a broad effort by the Government of Russia. So I don’t think you can tease it apart, sir, but it is inaccurate to say that it just meant Mr. Trump.”
Given those two statements, would you agree with the characterization that those two were incompatible statements?
A So I think that we’re trying to say the same thing. He probably said it more artfully. But, again, because this text is coming so close in time and it involved my both feeling about my personal distaste for Donald Trump as a person, but also my now concern because of the predication we had received which would open the investigation, I think that what we are saying essentially is consistent.
And ultimately, it’s his –you know, this is sort of –whatever
I intended may not have been ultimately what he perceived. So it’s
hard to say that there is an absolute truth with respect to that –that
statement.
I guess the other thing I would say –well, I guess that’s
sufficient.
Q And, Ms. Page, I think in beginning that colloquy on Friday, you said you weren’t certain. So that suggests to me that maybe you don’t remember precisely what you intended.
Is that correct?
A I do not. And I think I also said that –I’m clearly referring to an article or an op-ed that, I guess was about other GOP leaders who weren’t standing up to the President and my frustration about that.
So I don’t know to the extent that that was also informing what I was thinking about, but I have, as I sit here today, can’t tell you concretely because it was just a sort of flash in time.
Q Understood. Thank you. And then one more thing. You were asked on Friday again about the Christopher Steele dossier and how it came to the FBI.
I believe you claimed that you were not really involved with how the dossier came to the FBI so you weren’t clear on its providence. Is that correct?
A No, that is not correct. I am very clear about its providence.
Q Oh, you’re very clear about its providence?
A How we received the reports from Christopher Steele, yes, I am very clear about how we received those. Q Certainly. So are you also clear then as to whether Bruce Ohr gave those dossiers to the FBI? A This is in the category of things that I can’t answer.
What I can say is when we first received the set of reports that are commonly referred to as the dossier, that initial –our having obtained those documents initially, did not come from Bruce Ohr. They came from Christopher Steele through his handler to the FBI.
Q Understood. Thank you.
BY MS. HARIHARAN:
Q I just want to –good morning.
A Good morning. Please go ahead. I’m sorry.
Q I just want to go back quickly to the discussion about the differences between the DOJ and the FBI on compulsory process and just general legal or investigative differences that may have existed during the Midyear investigation.
So generally speaking, when there were disagreements between the FBI and DOJ on how to seek evidence, what was the DOJ’s position, as far as you can characterize? Like in the sense would the FBI generally want to pursue a more aggressive stance and DOJ was more conservative, and is that common in investigations overall?
A Yes. That is true with respect to this investigation. I think that even the IG found that the FBI consistently wanted to take more aggressive steps in the Clinton investigation.
It’s hard to characterize, you know, two enormous institutions of many tens of thousands of people monolithically. But certainly in the counterintelligence realm, the Department tends to be quite cautious and quite conservative.
Q And in the case of the Midyear investigation, do you think
the career prosecutors that disagreed on pursuing a more aggressive stance, this was based on legitimate legal differences of opinion or was it something on a –was there a political bias involved or -•
A I’m not aware of any political bias.
Q In the inspector general’s report, on page 79, I’m just going to quickly read the quote. Quote: “Despite the public perception that the Midyear investigation did not use a grand jury and instead relied exclusively on consent, we found that agents and prosecutors did use grand jury subpoenas and other compulsory process to gain access to documentary and digital evidence. According to the documents we reviewed, at least 56 grand jury subpoenas were issued, 5 court orders were obtained pursuant to 18 usc 2783(d) orders, and 3 search warrants were granted,” end quote.
Were you part of any of the decisions to issue one of the 56 grand jury subpoenas?
A I was not, no.
Q Or the 2783(d) orders?
A No.
Q Were you part of any of the decisions to issue the search
warrants?
A I don’t think so.
Q Generally speaking, can you speak to why the FBI advocated for the use of compulsory process in this case?
A I can’t really
Q Or before.
A Yeah, I can’t answer that question in the abstract. So, I mean, if there’s a specific example you want me to speak to, I can try, but
Q So, again, it’s just –we’re trying to understand what the difference between DOJ’s approach to the case versus the FBI’s approach. And so, again, in your experience, was the differences based on legitimate legal arguments or a strategic argument?
A I’m sure that’s true, yes.
BY MS. KIM:
Q So let’s take from the abstract to the specific. So I think you were talking about the culling laptops and the server, the decision whether to pursue those through compulsory process or to obtain those through consent agreements.
In your interactions with Department of Justice personnel, were their arguments that those should be pursued through consent processes governed by what you saw as differences of opinion from you that were legitimate and grounded in legal justification?
A Yeah, I would say so. We –what I personally found frustrating is the Department would sort of make a determination that –part of the argument was that we would not be able to obtain the laptops pursuant to compulsory process, which I –as to my own personal experience –disagreed with. I thought that we would be able to. Maybe there might be strategic reasons not to, there might be other reasons not to.
But I disagreed sort of foundationally. that it would not be available to us because we would not be able to make out the standard, or to be able to pierce attorney-client privilege, or more likely, in my view, there was a disagreement about whether it was –the sorting activity conducted by Mills and Samuelson was opinion work product, which is quite protected under the law, versus some other privilege.
And so the frustration was in their sort of unwillingness to explain their reasoning. They sort of, for many –for some time –simply stated, as a matter of course: We can’t, and we won’t be able to.
And it was my view that that was not the case. And I did my own research with respect to that topic because I was frustrated. And so we had sort of an ongoing back and forth about that.
But, yes, it was grounded in, you know, legal disagreement ultimately.
Q And was it the subject of rigorous and vigorous debate?
A Yes.
Q Extensive debate where you were free to express your point of view?
A Yes.
Q And extensive debate where the DOJ did eventually express its point of view about its strategic justifications?
A Yes.
Q And do you have any reason or evidence to believe that those strategic decisions were based on improper considerations, including political bias?
A No, I do not. I have no reason to believe that.
Ms. Hariharan. Did any of the senior political leaders of the DOJ intervene at all in the decision to seek or not seek compulsory process?
Ms. Page. With respect to that decision, yes.
So this was very much a –we were at very much a standstill for a considerable amount of time. And it’s my understanding –I know for sure that Mr. McCabe had multiple conversations with George Toscas on the topic because we all, including up through the Director, just agreed that we could not credibly end this investigation without having attempted to obtain those laptops and search them.
And we were sort of not making progress trying to explain or convince the Department prosecutors, the line prosecutors involved in the investigation, of this feeling. And even though we kept invoking the Director, and we would sort of say, like, we are not going to close this thing until we have tried to get this, they didn’t see it as useful.
They didn’t think it was going to change the outcome of the investigation, which we agreed with. We didn’t have a reason to think it would change the outcome of the investigation.
It wasn’t about thinking that for sure there would be different evidence in those laptops. It was about our credibility to be able to say that we ran down every sort of necessary investigative lead.
And so because we had sort of reached a stalemate a number of times on this discussion, I know that it was elevated to certainly the Deputy Director and George Toscas.
If I’m not mistaken, I think that even the Director may have had a conversation with Sally Yates, the DAG, about it, but I’m not positive. If it occurred it’s in the IG report, but I don’t recall exactly.
BY MS. KIM:

Q So that call seems to be DOJ expressing at the highest –or excuse me –the FBI expressing at its highest levels the decision to pursue a certain investigative step and convincing the Department to come along with the FBI’s reasoning. Is that accurate?
A Not its legal reasoning, but its strategic reasoning, yes.
Q That’s –yes. Thank you.
Are you aware of any instances where it went the other way, where the FBI wanted to take strident action but a senior political official at the DOJ had to talk the FBI down in the Clinton email case?
Let me try to –let me try –you look puzzled, so I mean
A Yeah, I
Q Let the record reflect you look puzzled.
A Okay.
Q Let my try to explain a little bit more clearly what I mean.
I think the concern here is that there was a Democratically led political DOJ in charge of an investigation where a prominent Democrat was the subject and target. Are you aware of any instances where senior political leaders at the Department of Justice intervened to counselor order the FBI to not seek a compulsory process?
A No, not to my knowledge.
Q So you are not aware of Loretta Lynch or Sally Yates intervening to stop the FBI?
A No, not to my knowledge.
BY MS. HARIHARAN:
Q Okay. So I just want to move on to just sort of general questions about the FBI’s investigative techniques. And I know some of these –this was somewhat addressed earlier, but just to clarify a couple things.
On May 18th, 2018, President Trump tweeted, quote: “Apparently the DOJ put a spy in the Trump campaign. This has never been done before. And by any means necessary, they’re out to frame Donald Trump for crimes he didn’t commit,” end quote.
Are you aware of any information that would substantiate the President’s claims that the DOJ put a spy in the Trump campaign?
A No.
Q Does the FBI place spies in U.S. political campaigns?
A Not the current FBI.
Q Are you aware of any information that would substantiate the President’s claim that DOJ is out to frame him? A No. Q In your experience –and this goes back a little bit to our discussion on Friday about contacts with human informants –does the FBI use spies in any of its investigative techniques?
A We call them sources. They’re not spies exactly, but -•
Q Can you, as much as again, understanding you were not a counterintelligence official can you explain for the record the difference between a human informant as the FBI specifically uses that term and sort of the layman term that is often used in the media of a spy?
A The spy is somebody acting on behalf of a foreign government in order to collect intelligence against that government. So, you know, a spy is commonly, you know, discussed with respect to like an individual who is acting on behalf of a foreign government –say, like Russia or China or, who knows, Iran –and is in the United States trying to collect information in order to advance its country’s goals.
A confidential human source is somebody who has access to information which may be relevant to an FBI investigation or may, him or herself, have engaged in criminal activity and has agreed to cooperate with the government and collect additional information with respect to the criminal activity he or her was –he or she was engaged in.
Q Have you been involved in any investigations where the FBI did not follow the established procedures on the use of confidential human informants?
A Me personally? Not to my knowledge.
Q Have you ever been involved in a DOJ or FBI investigation conducted for political purposes?
A Never.
Q Have you ever been involved in a DOJ or FBI investigation that attempted to frame U.S. citizens for crimes they did not commit?
A No, ma’am.
Q Have you been part of any investigation where the FBI or DOJ used politically biased, unverified sources to obtain a FISA warrant?
A No.
Q Are you aware of any instances where the FBI and DOJ manufactured evidence in order to obtain a FISA warrant? A Never. Q Are you aware of the FISA court ever approving an FBI or DOJ warrant that was not based on credible or sufficient evidence, in your experience?
A No, not to my knowledge.
Q Are you aware of any attempts by the FBI or DOJ to intentionally mislead FISA court judges in an application for a FISA warrant by either omitting evidence or manufacturing evidence?
A No, ma’am.
Q Are you aware of any instances at the FBI and DOJ of an investigation failing to follow proper procedures to obtain a FISA warrant?
A No.
Q I’m going to quote the President when I say this. On May 20th, 2018 he tweeted: “I hereby demand and will do so officially tomorrow that the Department of Justice look into whether or not the FBI/DOJ infiltrated or surveilled the Trump campaign for political purposes and if any such demands or requests were made by people within the Obama Administration!”, exclamation point, end quote. Does the FBI conduct investigations to frame U.S. citizens for crimes they did not commit?
A No, ma’am.
Q Then at a political rally on May 29th, 2018, the President again stated, quote: “So how do you like the fact they had people infiltrating our campaign?” end quote. Did the FBI or DOJ ever investigate the Trump campaign for, quote, “political purposes”?
A No.
Q Did the FBI or DOJ ever, quote, “infiltrate or surveil,” end quote, the Trump campaign?
A No.
Q To your knowledge, did President Obama or anyone in his White
House ever, quote, “demand or request,” end quote, that the DOJ or FBI, again, quote, “infiltrate or surveil,” end quote, the Trump campaign for, quote, “political purposes”?
A No, ma’am. Mr. Krishnamoorthi. I just have a couple of quick questions for you. First of all, I know that we covered this a little bit, I think, on Friday, but can you talk a little bit about your role on the Clinton investigation? How did you view it? And what was kind of the limitations on your authority?
Ms. Page. So, as I have tried to describe, I’m not on the team with respect to –so the team is comprised of the following: case agents, like line agents who are doing sort of the day-to-day investigative activity, line analysts engaged in the same activity, a supervisor, forensic people, I think a forensic accountant, cyber people, support staff, and then, up the chain, sort of more senior FBI agents supervising the investigation.
I am none of those people –lawyers, of course –I am none of those people. My job was to support the Deputy Director in all the activity that the Deputy Director supervised.
So we’re talking today just about the Clinton investigation and the Russia investigation, but, of course, I assisted the deputy with all of the responsibilities, save for limited ones like HR and budget and sort of personnel-type matters, all of the activities for which he was responsible. So that would be any number of investigations at any given time.
And with each of those I played both sort of a sounding board -type of role, to sort of discuss my opinion or his view as to what particular step we should take or whether we should, you know, brief the White House or Congress or X-activity or V-activity.
So at a very high-level kind of macro-decisionmaking on all manner of activity, but also to stay kind of with my ear to the ground on the topics that would sort of come before him.
So, for example, if there was a meeti~g that was going to be held
about a particular cyber operation or some type of activity, I might reach out to the program managers who were responsible for that activity in order to get a sense of what this is, why is it coming to the deputy, is there a conflict, is there a disagreement
Mr. Krishnamoorthi. Got it.
Ms. Page. –you know, was he going to be deciding something, so that we had a little bit of preparedness for the topic that was coming to him.
Mr. Krishnamoorthi. Got it.
So just so I understand it, basically you don’t have any supervisory role —
Ms. Page. No, sir.
Mr. Krishnamoorthi. –with regards to this investigation? You’re not a member of the team on this investigation, correct?
Ms. Page. That’s correct.
Mr. Krishnamoorthi. You don’t have a supervisory role, certainly.
Ms. Page. I do not have a supervisory role or a decisionmaking role.
Mr. Krishnamoorthi. And what percentage of your overall time was spent on this investigation?
Ms. Page. Oh, my goodness.
Mr. Krishnamoorthi. If you just had to ballpark it. Probably a minimal amount, wouldn’t you say? Ms. Page. No, it wasn’t minimal, but it wasn’t the majority either. Gosh, I really –I have –I cannot speculate -•
Mr. Krishnamoorthi. So less than S0 percent of your time.
Ms. Page. Yes, that’s fair.
Mr. Krishnamoorthi. Okay. So let’s say, let’s say that you had these political views expressed in your text messages –and you can see why people would be concerned about that. And let’s say you wanted to railroad this investigation a certain way.
Ms. Page. The Clinton investigation.
Mr. Krishnamoorthi. The Clinton investigation in a certain say, and you wanted your political views to actually translate into biased actions. It seems to me that you had no opportunity or ability to do that because you had no supervisory role on this investigation team, you weren’t a member of this team. Even if you wanted to, you’d have to go through your Deputy Director McCabe to do anything in terms of taking action. Is that right?
Ms. Page. That’s fair, sir. I guess
Mr. Krishnamoorthi. So –go ahead.
Ms. Page. I guess the other thing I would flag is that I think –I mean, obviously you, the public, many have tens of thousands of my texts. I think there are, I don’t know, maybe two or three total in which there’s anything favorable said about Hillary Clinton at all.
And the note –the fact that before July 28th when we received the predicating information for the Russia investigation, the fact that I didn’t care for Donald Trump is not particularly relevant to me with respect to the investigation we were conducting on Hillary Clinton.
The two of them had nothing to –you know, my opinions on him had nothing to do with whether or not she in fact handled –mishandled classified information.
You know, I don’t –I don’t –what’s been frustrating and what has sort of strained credulity to me is that the sort of pejorative texts about Donald Trump that I make before July 28th are just my feeling about him personally and don’t really have any bearing with respect to how I feel about Secretary Clinton.
So it just –anyway, it just strikes me as how I feel about Donald Trump doesn’t really have any bearing with respect to whether or not Secretary Clinton mishandled information. And the reality is, as I’ve sort of said, I wasn’t particularly fond or favorable toward Secretary Clinton.
And during the course of the investigation, you know, as we’ve discussed a number of times, both Pete and I were regularly the people advocating for the most aggressive course of action with respect to the Clinton investigation.
Mr. Krishnamoorthi. And what would be, in your view, kind of the best example that would show that you took that type of approach?
Ms. Page. It was true certainly with respect to the laptops that we’ve discussed. I mean, we were –we were –sort of adamantly fought the need to get those laptops, which Secretary Clinton’s people were adamantly fighting us sort of not to obtain, and the Department did not want us to obtain those.
Let me –I’ll have to think about other examples, but there’s, I think, two or three that –at least I discussed with the IG in the past, that where we sort of disagreed with the Department. And it was Pete and I sort of advocating the more aggressive position against Secretary Clinton.
Mr. Krishnamoorthi. Got it. Okay. If you guys want to take it.
Thank you.
Ms. Page. You’re welcome.

BY MS. KIM:
Q Ms. Page, Republicans have repeatedly raised questions about why the FBI did not provide the Trump campaign with a defensive briefing about Russians attempt to infiltrate the campaign.
We understand from public reportings that senior officials from the FBI gave a high-level counterintelligence briefing to the Trump campaign after he became the presumptive Republican nominee in July 2016.
In that briefing we also know that FBI officials reportedly warned the Trump campaign about potential threats from foreign spies and instructed the Trump campaign to inform the FBI about any suspicious overtures.
Did you have any involvement in giving these briefings to the Trump campaign?
A I was not present for the briefings to the Trump campaign, no.
Q Did you receive readouts from the briefings?
A I did.
Q Is it true that senior FBI officials warned the Trump campaign as early as July 2016 that Russians would try to infiltrate the Trump campaign?
A I don’t recall that specifically, but I don’t have any reason to disagree with you.
Q Would the briefing have touched on how the campaign should react to offers from foreign nations to interfere in our elections?
A I don’t think a briefing would have been that specific. I think we would have –as is the case in a typical defensive brief –I think that we would have flagged if you encounter activity which you believe is suspicious, particularly from threat countries, that they should notify the FBI.
Q To your knowledge, did the Trump campaign report any contacts with foreign officials during this briefing?
A I’m not sure.
Q So are you aware of the Trump campaign reporting contacts between George Papadopoulos and Russian officials?
A Oh, no, I don’t believe that occurred.
Q Do you recall the Trump campaign reporting the June 2016 Trump Tower meeting with senior campaign officials including Donald Trump Jr., Jared Kushner, and Paul Manafort?
Mr. Bessee. So I will –sorry –I will instruct the witness not to answer anything that goes into the special counsel’s equiRies and the ongoing criminal investigation. So that would impact that particular —
Ms. Kim. Thank you.
Ms. Page. Thank you. Sorry.
Ms. Kim. Two weeks after this briefing, on August 3rd, 2016, Donald Trump Jr. reportedly met at Trump Tower with an emissary who told Donald Trump Jr. that the princes who led Saudi Arabia and the United Emirates were eager to help his father win election as President. To your knowledge, did Donald Trump Jr. report this offer from the Saudis and the Emiratis to the FBI?
Mr. Bessee. Again, anything that goes into the ongoing criminal investigation or anything that impacts that, the witness will not respond to –will not be able to respond to those questions.
Ms. Kim. Thank you.
BY MS. KIM:
Q Ms. Page, can you explain generally the national security implications for a political campaign concealing or failing to report foreign contacts of offers to interfere in our election?
A Well, this is –I’m not sure it’s a commonplace occurrence. But speaking generally, an effort to affect an American election is obviously a quite serious one, regardless of –voting and the democratic process is obviously sort of a foundational backbone to what makes America America.
So any effort by a foreign power to intercede or intervene in any way is of grave concern. It would be even more so if it was in fact true that a political campaign was working with a foreign power in order to affect an American election.
Q And again to your knowledge, a defensive briefing of this nature would have involved general instruction to report outreach from target foreign countries to the FBI?
A I’m sorry, I don’t –I have to take issue with the nature of your question.
You’re suggesting that a defensive briefing with respect to an involvement or an intrusion into the American election may have taken place and I don’t think I have answered that question.
What I have answered is that I am aware that a defensive briefing with respect to foreign powers and what foreign powers may –how foreign powers may try to contact you –collective –your campaign collectively, now that you are the presumptive candidate, and how you should handle that.
But I don’t think I have answered a question with respect to a defensive briefing about interference in an American election.
Q That is fair. Thank you for clarifying.
And in a general defensive briefing about general foreign threats, is there a general guidance given that foreign threats should be reported to the FBI?
A Yes.
Q Thank you.
I think that leads us to –leads us well to the question of why the FBI, particularly the counterintelligence officials at the FBI who were working both on the Midyear investigation and on the Russia collusion investigation, were prioritizing the Russia collusion investigation in the September/October timeframe.
The inspector general’s report was not favorable to Mr. Strzok in this regard. It characterized his prioritization of the Russia collusion investigation as peRhaps indicative of some kind of political bias.
I think you were there. You saw Mr. Strzok’ s workload. And you were intimately familiar with both investigations. Do you have a general response to that finding by the inspector general?
A I do. I am honestly baffled that they would find such a thing. And I do believe that they did the best they could to conduct that investigation fairly. And I cannot understand, particularly in light of what I know I said to them, I cannot understand how they could reach that conclusion.
What we were dealing with at the outset was –this is now, you know, October. This is a month before the election. And I can’t speak to whether we were any closer to determining whether there was in fact collusion, because I’m precluded from doing so right now, but we are still looking very seriously at whether our most threatening, most hostile foreign power was engaged in –was working with an American political candidate or members of that candidate’s team to affect the outcome of an American election.
It is an unheard-of investigation, in the first place, in the counterintelligence realm. Russians engage in all manner of nefarious activity, but this was a new height in terms of brazenness –if true in terms of brazenness.
And with respect to how threatening that would be –again, if it were true –the notion that there might be more emails that have not previously been seen that existed on Hillary Clinton’s email server just simply don’t even enter into the realm of the same room of seriousness.
The Clinton investigation involved activities that had taken place 3 years prior. It’s an entirely historical investigation. Even if –even if there had been dispositive evidence which revealed –I don’t know what –even there, which would be a very serious allegation, in my assessment, and I think in the assessment of the Counterintelligence Division, they still don’t even come close to the . threat posed if Russia had co-opted a member of a political campaign.
So that alone is really baffling to me, that they equated the sort of two investigations.
Furthermore –and this is based on my own personal knowledge –almost as soon as we discovered that there may be these additional emails, that was assigned to people who were not involved in the Russia investigation.
So it would not have been Pete’s responsibility in the first place to have engaged and conducted that investigation. He’s the lead of it. He’s not the one who’s going to go to New York. He’s not the one who’s going to, like, do the forensics on it, like.
And so it made, in my mind, perfect sense what he did, because he called on people who had been on the Clinton investigation, who were not on the Russia investigation, to follow up and find out what the facts were, whether it was worth our while.
Because I will say, it’s not as though every time there was any allegation that there might be a new email that lives, you know, in Peoria, not everyone of those was –necessitated investigative activity.
The only reason that this one ultimately got our attention, and this only occurred, to my recollection, later in October, is because of the volume of the emails which potentially existed on Mr. Weiner’s laptop.
At the time that we first got the information, I’m not aware of that having been told to us. I don’t recall in late September, early October, when I first found out by the Weiner laptop, I don’t recall being told that it was, you know, tens of thousands of Hillary Clinton and Huma emails.
We knew that there were many tens of thousands, if not hundreds of thousands of emails on Mr. Weiner’s laptop, but it’s not –my recollection is that it’s not until later into October do we actually learn that, no, no, these actually might be relevant and from a relevant timeframe.
Ms. Hariharan. Can you describe the extent of the overlap between folks who were on the MYE team and folks who were on the Trump-Russia team? Because, you know, it’s reported as if they are the same.
Ms. Page. They are not the same. What is the same are the sort of senior people. And that makes sense because there are fewer people who are in a senior position who could supervise the investigation.
So you have to understand, like, for example, in the Counterintelligence Division, there are three DADs, there are three deputy assistant directors, one of whom is analyst, so not an agent, not somebody who you would expect to run an investigation, and then there are two other ones. One was Pete and one I’m not sure when it was filled, but was open for a short period of time.
So with respect to the personnel writ large, almost everyone below Pete and Jon Moffa in the Counterintelligence Division in terms of the agents who were working on the Russia investigation, almost all of them –I think all of them, in fact –are different from the line-level agents and analysts who worked on the Clinton investigation.
And this was in part, too, because everybody was exhausted. We had worked incredibly hard and as fast as we possibly could on the Clinton investigation. And the truth of the matter was, those of us who were on Clinton and who stayed over for Russia all just really couldn’t believe ourselves that we had to sort of gear up again, you know, 3 weeks after being finally done with Clinton and finally being able to get back to all of our day jobs, that we were sort of gearing back up again.
So it’s only –really it’s the people that met with Jim Comey. Those are the only people that were really the same with respect to both teams. So it’s the same general counsel, the same deputy general counsel, me, Mr. McCabe, Dave Bowdich.
The EAD for National Security Branch changed, but that was just because of regular personnel turnover. Bill Priestap was the same. Pete was the same. Jon Moffa was the same.
But other than that, all of the rest of the personnel were, to the best of my knowledge –there could have been one or two –but all of the rest of the personnel on the Clinton team and the Russia team were different.
BY MS. KIM:
Q Was there anything about the timeframe in which the Weiner laptop was processed that seemed unusual to you? So that’s to say, would it have been unusual for imaging and processing that kind of data to take more than a few weeks?
A No, it happens all the time. And especially with a laptop that was as voluminous as Mr. Weiner’s was, the forensic work and the processing and the imaging regularly crashes and stops and has to be done again.
I don’t know precisely how long it took, but the notion that it took a week or 2 as being unusual –particularly, because it was not a priority the case for the New York field office –I should –let me take that back.
There was nothing about it that necessitated an exigency to the New York field office. This was a potential child exploitation case but, again, I don’t think that there was an allegation that there was ongoing exploitation.
And so I don’t know how the New York field office chose to prioritize it with respect to all of the other work that they were doing, but there’s nothing about it, to me, that stands out as necessitating, you know, an emergency, you know, imaging.
Q Did you personally observe any evidence suggesting that Mr. Strzok was prioritizing the Russia investigation at the cost of the Hillary Clinton email investigation reopening?
A Well, I mean the answer is we were prioritizing the Russia investigation because it was more important and more serious. But I wouldn’t say that it was a zero-sum issue because he didn’t neglect the Clinton investigation. He assigned it to the people who would appropriately have to handle it.
Q Yes. Are you aware of any evidence that Mr. Strzok or anyone on the Midyear investigation team was trying to bury the existence of the Weiner laptop or the data found therefrom?
A No, not at all.
Ms. Hariharan. Are you aware of any evidence that Mr. Strzok prioritized because of his political biases or was it because of just how serious the Russia investigation and how grave a threat it was?
Ms. Page. It’s the latter. It’s because the Russia investigation was a serious threat to the national security. Whether there are additional classified emails on a laptop that didn’t belong to Secretary Clinton just, in my view, did not rank in the same way.
BY MS. KIM:
Q And I just want to be clear of the nomenclature. When we talk about the Russia collusion investigation in this timeframe, candidate Donald Trump is not the subject of that investigation. Is that correct?
A That’s correct.
Q I believe that’s what Director Comey has publicly stated.
A So it was a very narrowly scoped, very discrete investigation, because we understood the gravity of what it was we were looking at, and we were not going to take a more extreme step than we felt we could justify.
Ms. Kim. I think we’re okay going off the record at this point for a lunch break until 1:38.
Thank you.
[Recess.]
[1:30 p.m.] Mr. Parmiter. Let’s go back on” the record. The time is 1: 30 p. m.
BY MR. PARMITER:
Q And, Ms. Page, I just had a couple of followup questions from things that were discussed in the first hour.
You had mentioned that charges –it had been determined that charges were not sustainable under 793( f)( 1) in particular. I’m just curious whether there are elements of that statute that were not satisfied in the case or was it just the gross negligence issue -•
A I think
Q –that led to that conclusion?
A Sorry.
I think that it was both. But honestly, I’m not positive as I sit here today. Because if the statute is unconstitutional, it doesn’t matter if you have all the evidence in the world, you can’t bring that case.
So I think that I have said –and I think that the minority staff read back to me –a comment that it was both insufficient evidence and unconstitutionally vague. And I guess I’m not certain about the first point, about insufficient evidence, because it doesn’t really ultimately matter what the evidence shows if the statute is –is not constitutional.
Q Okay. But, I mean, would you agree that, you know, the Secretary of State is someone who’s lawfully entrusted with classified information and that a private server is not the place –i f classified information is stored on anything other than a classified server or system, it would be out of its proper place?
A That is correct, sir.
Q Okay. To your knowledge and in your experience, did DOJ ever inform you of any other statutes that are unconstitutionally vague?
A In the history of my being at the FBI and DOJ?
Q Do you recall any
A I’m not positive, to be honest with you. I mean, the truth of the matter is the counterespionage section at the Department, as I think I’ve said, is just conservative by nature and cautious by nature, very much to the frustration of the FBI.
And I’ve certainly been present with a number of meetings in which they didn’t want to prosecute or they didn’t want to bring charges on totally unrelated investigations, but didn’t –couldn’t necessarily articulate what was insufficient about the evidence or –so, I mean, this is –I guess what I’m trying to say is this is a little –it’s a somewhat institutional fact as well. But whether other statutes were vague, I just don’t remember.
Q Okay.
BY MR. SOMERS:
Q Do you remember any discussion of whether the Logan Act could be charged? A With respect to Secretary Clinton? Q With respect to anybody.
A On the Clinton investigation, I don’t remember a discussion
of the Logan Act.
Q On the Russia investigation?
A I am privy to conversations about the Logan Act in the Russia investigation.
Q Was it allowed to be charged?
A I don’t think it’s been charged.
Q My question is whether –you were told that the gross negligence part of -•
A Oh, I see what you’re saying.
Q –793 could not be charged. I’m asking whether you were told
A Yes.
Q that the Logan Act could or could not be charged.
A So I –okay, so let me see how I can answer this.
There were discussions about the Logan Act with the Department and similar concerns, not about the constitutionality of the statute, but about the age and the lack of use of the Logan Act. I did participate in conversations with the Department about it being an untested statute and a very~ very old one, and so there being substantial litigation risk, not unlike, although this comparison was never made, but not unlike the gross negligence statute. This would –this would be a –a risk, a strategic and litigation risk~ to charge a statu~e that had not sort of been well-tested.
Q But the gross negligence part of 793~ that was a clearly it couldn’t be charged versus a –I think you just described it as a
litigation risk with respect to the Logan Act?
A With respect to gross negligence, that is correct, sir. I’m sorry, that it could not be charged or should not be charged, because it was –I think it’s both. It was not constitutional but also untested, which goes to the question about its constitutionality, I think. So I think they’re somewhat intermingled, those two, with respect to gross negligence.
Mr. Parmiter. Mr. Meadows.
Mr. Meadows. Thank you.
Lisa, I’m going to go over a few text messages. None of them are personal. And so I just want to really try to get some clarification from you.
I probably have read more text messages that have been published and nonpublished, and even on some of the redacted words that originally were redacted that you may be able to help me get a good understanding of what’s there.
So early on, in August –well, first off, is there a difference, from an FBI’s perspective, of a confidential human source and a confidential informant? Because I read the FBI manual, and it seems like one gets treated one way and another gets –but from your perspective, they’re one and the same?
Ms. Page. I –the term that we use for it is a confidential human source. A more, I guess, layman term would be an informant. But to my knowledge there is no distinction with respect to the rules which govern a source’s activity. These are one and the same.
Mr. Meadows. Because one of the things I was reading indicated that I guess when we have confidential human sources that we pay there IS a whole litany of things that the FBI and DOJ have to go through on those confidential human sources that we actually pay.
Are you aware of that?
Ms. Page. I think there are –I I m not sure there –I I m not sure about that, sir. There are certainly rules with respect to paying a source, but the –with respect to opening a source and how you handle a source and the admonitions that you provide a source, those are the same regardless of whether a source is paid or not.
Mr. Meadows. Okay. In a text message back and forth between you and Peter Strzok shortly after he returned there was an article that came out and it was “Inside the Failing Mission to Save Donald Trump From Himself.”
And in the redacted portion, it says: But see, this article so rings true that then I think that the confidential human source was [redacted] is wrong is [redacted].
Were you aware of any time where you felt like you questioned the confidential human source, as this text would indicate?
Ms. Page. Can you, do you mind, could you —
Mr. Meadows. Yes. It would have been on the August 13th of 2016, at 13: 22: 29, or 27, I guess. You I re going back and forth talking about 302s with the State Department and –
-Ms. Page. So are we talking about Clinton then it sounds like? August -•
Mr. Meadows. Well, I don’t –the Clinton investigation would have been over with at that point.
Ms. Page. That’s true. I’m sorry, sir, the date again?
Mr. Meadows. It would have been August 13th of 2016. It was about 2 weeks after Russia opened.
Ms. Page. Okay.
Mr. Meadows. Russia opens. Peter Strzok travels 1IIIIIIII.
And you’re going back and forth, apparently mad because the State Department says, you know -•Ms. Page. So we’re talking about two different things. So the State –let me just take a second and look at this.
So there’s no debate. So this is me. I’m sorry, so a couple texts up, this is Pete: Hey, read the email I just sent. I did not include OPA or OCI in the distro. I’m responding, I don’t know what the email is, but: There’s no debate. I’m going to forward to Kortan. God, it makes me want to tell State to go Fit.
So we’re talking about Clinton now. And what I suspect we’re talking about is needing –you know, there’s still things that we need. I don’t know whether it’s –whether we’re producing in FOIA or what we’re talking about. But there, I think —
Mr. Meadows. Then you switch, I guess, to the confidential human source.
Ms. Page. Yes, I think that’s right. So then: Yep, you think we would have –you think we should have commented if only to rebut State’s expectation of interagency coordination crap. I think that there was like a press conference or something that we were pissed about that State was essentially saying, like, maligning the FBI. This is normal interagency, you know, kind of —
Mr. Meadows. Right, right.
Ms. Page. So the same thing with the next one.

Mr. Meadows. So it is right after that where you talk about not believing the confidential human source, or believing that —
Ms. Page. Is that what that –so I don’t know what that
Mr. Meadows. Yeah. In the redacted, it says, I think –and I’ll give you the redaction –that , the other redacted word.
So I guess the question becomes is, at any point did you question whether , as this text message would indicate?
Ms. Page. So I think we’re constantly questioning ourselves, actually. I don’t know –Mr. Meadows. This would have been very early on. So you’ve had , and almost immediately you’re questioning whether

Ms. Page. So I think that’s exactly what you want us to be doing, right? So I don’t know what this article says and I don’t know what is prompting the thinking, but we constantly want to be testing our
own assumptions and testing , with respect to Now, So it’s not a matter of right. That was sort of not in question with respect to
Mr. Meadows. Just that they had made the wrong assumption. ,right? Are
Mr. Meadows. So typically
Ms. Page. That’s the question that we’re trying to answer. And so
Mr. Meadows. Right. So there was some question back and forth at this particular point between you and Peter Strzok on whether …
And in doing that, how do you
Ms. Page. That’s the investigation, sir. That’s precisely what the investigation was designed to do. And so the entire objective –and I really do hope to convince you guys that we did things the way that the American people would want us to do them.
We get this predication that suggests and we take these very discrete steps to figure out is this true and, if so, who could be in a position to have received this information.
And so –but we’re constantly challenging our own/assumptions. And so we’re taking investigative steps in order to try to figure out,
A Russian can’t just like [sound of knocking] knock on the door of any old stranger and say, hi —
Mr. Meadows. Let’s hope not.
Ms. Page. I would hope, right? That’s unlikely to be productive. So you look to see are there
And so, again, not knowing what I was thinking at the time or what the article says, it wouldn’t strike me as inappropriate at all, in fact, quite the contrary. We are constantly, is this all just puffery or is this real?
Mr. Meadows. So was this the only time that you feel like you
? Was this a single time?
Ms. Page. I can’t remember any other particular time, but I didn’t remember this one so —
Mr. Meadows. But you’re saying that it normally happens on a pretty regular basis, so you go back and forth. So this would not be out of the norm to say, well,
Ms. Page. That is the point of the investigation, to try to get to the bottom of it, sir.
Mr. Meadows. So let me go a little bit further then. In looking at this review, very early on, without getting into the specifics of the actual investigation, there were a number of briefings that were
occurring. How many Crossfire Hurricane briefings were you involved with?
Ms. Page. Briefings for whom, sir? I’m sorry.
Mr. Meadows. Well, how many briefings were you involved with that were outside the –that had outside players beyond the FBI or DOJ?
Ms. Page. None.
Mr. Meadows. All right. So there were never any briefings that you attended where there was other intelligence officials part of the briefing outside the FBI and DOJ?
Ms. Page. Not about the Crossfire investigation, sir. So there’s two things operating at this time. I certainly participated in preparation sessions for the Director when the Director would either be going to the White House or maybe have a call —
Mr. Meadows. Right. We’ve got that. I think we’ve talked about that before, because I think early on, August 5th, there’s maybe the first original what we called at that time the Russia investigation briefing that happened. Peter Strzok comes back , makes it just in time for you to have that. There’s a briefing that occurs on August 8th.
And then there’s a briefing with Denis McDonough at the White House where Jonathan Moffa and others attended. Were you aware of that?
Ms. Page. I’m sure you’re right. I was aware of the briefings that were occurring at the White House. But those were not about the Crossfire. To the best of my knowledge, those were not —
Mr. Meadows. So they had nothing to do with any potential collusion between Russia and the Trump campaign? That was never mentioned?
Ms. Page. Not to my knowledge. It was always about the Russian active measures effort.
Mr. Meadows. All right. And so if that’s, indeed, the case, at some point it changed. At some point, there were other people outside the FBI and DOJ that were involved with that. And so I’m going to direct your attention a little bit later.
Because on August the 25th, there’s a text message going back and forth where I think it talks about the fact, you know, what are you doing after –and it’s redacted –the. brief. And it’s August 25th at 19:38:56.
Ms. Page. I see that. But mine’s redacted. What does it say?
Mr. Meadows. Yeah, yours is redacted. But it says: What are you doing after the. brief? And so that. brief you’re saying was an internal brief within the DOJ and FBI?
Ms. Page. Oh, yes, within, to the best of my knowledge.
Mr. Meadows. Because it’s the same day that Director Brennan is briefing Harry Reid, is why I ask. And so what you’re saying is you were unaware that Director Brennan was briefing Harry Reid that same day?
Ms. Page. I had no knowledge of that, no.
Mr. Meadows. Okay. All right. So if you’re looking at a brief,
typically who would you brief?
Ms. Page. So we had regular updates for the Director and the Deputy Director. I’d say certainly every 2 weeks, but possibly even more frequently. We had sort of standing sort of update meeting for either the deputy
Mr. Meadows. Similar to you did during the MYE -•
Ms. Page. Correct.
Mr. Meadows. –and you’re doing that now. And so you do those. And those briefings were intended for the Director or the Deputy Director to do what?
Ms. Page. To stay abreast of what we had found to the extent we –it allowed for a regular tempo, so that if we had a question about an investigative step or really just to sort of stay abreast of what we were doing and what we were learning.
Mr. Meadows. So because of the critical nature, you know, as you characterized it earlier, you believe that this was more important than the MYE in terms of its potential.
When you were doing those briefings with the Director and the Deputy Director –and the minority were talking about the defensive briefings –to my knowledge, and it’s been –we’ve looked to try to find anything other than what I would say the normal defensive briefing that you do for candidates, where you say, by the way be careful, change your passwords, you know, this is what you look for.
Did any of that brief that you ever did for the Deputy Director or Director end up in a detailed defensive briefing for at that point candidate Trump?
Ms. Page. I don’t believe so.
Mr. Meadows. And i f it were critical, especially in light of some of the individuals and because Donald Trump was not a subject of your investigation, and you were taking it seriously, who would have made the decision not to do a defensive briefing, to say, “Hey, by the way, you may have someone that’s really getting contacted by a foreign entity and you may want to be aware of it”? Who would have made the decision to either tell the candidate or not tell the candidate?
Ms. Page. That’s a good question. I don’t recall it ever coming up.
Mr. Meadows. So you’re telling me it never came up to –something this important, it never came up to tell the potential candidate that they might have a problem with somebody talking to the Russians?
Ms. Page. So that’s right, sir, but that’s because we didn’t know what we had. So typically, when we have a defensive brief, we have
pretty unassailable evidence.

Mr. Meadows. Right, and I don’t want you to.
Ms. Page. No, no, no, I won’t, but —
Mr. Meadows. Because it’s been characterized sometimes that I do, and I don’t want you to go into that. I guess
Ms. Page. No, but —
Mr. Meadows. So you’re saying you didn’t have a conclusion. You
didn’t have a specific
Ms. Page. Right. So typically what would happen is if we had much more unassailable evidence –or much more frequently is you would have an individual who was already known to the United States Government as suspicious in some way and associated with a hostile foreign government.
So we already know that… you know… Joe is of a concern to us. Once we see Joe starting to reach out to a Member of Congress or starting to reach out to a candidate… you know… to the extent we know what Joe is saying or what Joe might be doing… that’s when we would probably flag for that individual: You need to be aware that so-and-so may not be what they seem.
In this case… we don’t know what we have. So it’s not to say that we never would have gotten to a place where we might have done that… depending on how –what the evidence demonstrated… but certainly at this stage… but even later in the investigation… my personal view is I don’t think that it would have been appropriate to do.
Mr. Meadows. So under your personal opinion… there was never enough evidence to do a defensive briefing with specific targets? And I don’t want to put words in your mouth and I see you smiling… sol don’t –but that’s what I’m getting to.
I mean… at some point you have to have enough “there” there… guess… to quote someone else… to be able to suggest that there would be a defensive briefing… and you’re saying that that defensive briefing never took place because of a lack of specificity.
Ms. Page. No, not exactly, sir. You would want to know for sure what you had in front of you.
Mr. Meadows. So you wouldn’t want to falsely accuse somebody?
Ms. Page. You wouldn’t want to –well, you would want to
know –you would want to be able to say: We believe that so-and-so is, you know, an agent of a foreign power or we believe that so-and-so may be working with, you know, a hostile foreign source.
Mr. Meadows. And so that did not happen prior to November 8th of 2016 at least, because you would have done a defensive briefing, based on
Ms. Page. Not –there’s no –no, sir. There’s no hard-and-fast rule. I don’t –I don’t –I don’t want to leave the impression that once you meet X criteria a defensive briefing occurs. This is fluid and happens at the sort of discretion and judgment of senior counterintelligence officials and, frankly, the deputy or the Director himself with respect to certain high-level individuals.
It’s –I’m –I’m –I’m a little constrained. I feel a little
constrained in terms of what I can say. Let’s try to speak
hypothetically.
One of two things might lead you not to conduct –multiple things might lead you not to conduct a defensive briefing. One of them might be insufficient evidence.
Mr. Meadows. Which is what you said at least at this date, you
had insufficient —
Ms. Page. Certainly in August, I would agree with that. A couple weeks in, we don’t know what we have. I think that that’s fair.
On the opposite spectrum, it might be inappropriate for investigative reasons to provide a defensive brief.
Mr. Meadows. But that would only be if Donald Trump was the subject of your investigation.
Ms. Page. No, sir.
Mr. Meadows. I mean, at what point –so I guess take it from my standpoint. As a Member of Congress, if I’m inadvertently having contact with somebody, of which I have contact with Russian diplomats on a weekly basis many times, and I assume everyone of them want to do us harm. I mean, so —
Ms. Page. You should, sir.
Mr. Meadows. –for the record
Ms. Page. I agree with you totally.
Mr. Meadows. –I want to make sure that I assume everyone of them wants to do harm to us. Ms. Page. Yes. Mr. Meadows. So in doing that, at what point would you reach out
and say, you know, Mark, by the way, you may want to be –this –I mean
Ms. Page. So the reason I am trying to tread lightly here is I don’t think that Donald Trump would need to be the subject of the investigation in order for us to make a decision that a defensive briefing is not appropriate.
But there are certainly gradations shy of subject which, if true –and I’m not suggesting that they are true –but if hypothetically, and I truly mean this in the hypothetical, if we thought that Donald Trump is not the subject, we’re not suggesting that he’s the person in touch with Russia, but maybe the evidence suggests that he knows that his people are in touch with Russia.
Mr. Meadows. But to be clear for the record, there was no evidence that suggested that.
Ms. Page. I am not speaking with respect to the evidence at all.
Mr. Meadows. I just want to make sure we’re clear for the record.
Ms. Page. I am making no statement with respect to the evidence we had. I am speaking hypothetically.
Mr. Meadows. So let me go back, because one thing gets really concerning. So you give a brief on August the 25th. Director Brennan is giving a brief. It’s not a Gang of Eight brief. It is a one-on-one, from what we can tell, a one-on-one briefing with Harry Reid at that point.
And it becomes apparent, based on your text messages and based on Director Comey’s emails, that you all are aware that that conversation took place.
Were you aware that Director Brennan had a briefing with Harry Reid and that you expected a letter from Harry Reid?
Ms. Page. I take your word that I was.
Mr. Meadows. Well, no, I don’t want you to take my word.
Ms. Page. I just don’t –I remember Harry Reid sending a letter, like I remember that happening sometime during the course of this
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investigation. But I do not have any recollection if I knew –we had regular Crossfire briefs of the entire team for the Director. I do not recall the Director telling us that Brennan was planning to brief Harry Reid that day and —
Mr. Meadows. NO; no; I’m not saying that he knew that he was planning to brief him; but that once he briefed him; because it appears that certain elements of what is now referred to as the dossier were communicated to Harry Reid; based on that letter; because —
Ms. Page. I have no knowledge of that. We didn’t have the reports yet.
Mr. Meadows. So –and I know. According to other testimony; apparently you didn’t actually physically get the documents until mid-September. Is that correct?
Ms. Page. That is correct, sir.
Mr. Meadows. So on August –
Ms. Page. Not just physically. Even electronically; like -•
Mr. Meadows. So on August 30th –but you were aware of it prior to that?
Ms. Page. NO; sir. NOJ sir.
Mr. Meadows. So what you’re saying is, is that you had no knowledge of these potential unverified memo, .prior to the middle part of September in your investigation?
Ms. Page. That is correct, sir.
Mr. Meadows. Okay. So on August 30th; you and Peter are going back and forth, and you go, “Here we go.” If you’ll look at 9:44:50 on August the 30th, you go, “Here we go.” And it’s referencing “Harry Reid Cites Evidence of Russian Tampering in the U.S. Vote and Seeks FBI. ”
NOw, what happens is, and what I guess gives me a little bit of concern is, if you drop down, that if you drop down to the same day, August 30th, 9:45, it says: “The D” –which I assume means Director “said at the a.m. brief that Reid had called him and told him that he would be sending the letter.”
Ms. Page. Okay.
Mr. Meadows. So you get a brief that says, well, we got the letter, but it’s almost like it’s a coordinated effort between Harry Reid and the FBI Director, because obviously, he’s briefing you.
Ms. Page. I –I don’t see –so, again, this is just my personal experience. We just don’t really deal with the Hill that much.
Mr. Meadows. No, I know you don’t, but
Ms. Page. No, no, no, but even the
Mr. Meadows. So what you’re saying is you don’t recall ever being briefed that a letter was coming from Harry Reid?
Ms. Page. Not until –this is the morning brief that this is a reference to, so I must have attended the morning brief. And so this is me just saying, yeah, the Director said we’re going to be getting a letter. But no, I’m not aware —
Mr. Meadows. Well, indeed, you did get a letter that got published very quickly in The New York Times, and that was kind of the start of much of that.
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You know, here’s the other concern, because I guess Peter Strzok sends an email to Bill Priestap that same day , with you carbon copied, and it says: “Unfortunately, this will politicize things but was unavoidable, I suppose.”
So, I mean, obviously it’s going back and forth.
Ms. Page. So my view on that is exactly what the FBI always is, which is, no offense, politicians are involved, right? Like-•
Mr. Meadows. None taken.
Ms. Page. We want to do this in secret. We want to do this the way we do it. I don’t know what Harry Reid was told or why or what the purpose of Brennan –you know, this is way out of my pay grade. But like that’s not how we want to proceed. We do things effectively when they’re in secret. And so I think that that, you know, it’s unavoidable, I guess, is, you know, well, these things happen, but not on our watch.
Mr. Meadows. Okay. So let’s –taking you at your word, then I guess what concern I have is why would Director Brennan be aware of things that the FBI was not aware of at this particular point when it actually would potentially involve, according to Peter Strzok’s word on January 10th of 2017, an unverified salacious set of memos?
Ms. Page. So I don’t understand why you’re saying this –whatever is in the –whatever occurs between Brennan and Reid J I don’t understand what the relationship. to the dossier is. That’s what I’m not following.
Mr. Meadows. So the dossier apparently was mentioned. In fact, we have documents that would suggest that in that briefing the dossier was mentioned to Harry Reid and then obviously we’re going to have to have conversations. Does that surprise you —
Ms. Page. Totally surprises me.
Mr. Meadows. –that Director Brennan would be aware of -•
Ms. Page. Yes, sir. Because with all due honesty, if Director Brennan –so we got that information
Mr. Meadows. We do know there are multiple sources.
Ms. Page. I do know that. I do know that the information ultimately found its way lots of different places, certainly in October of 2016. But if the CIA as early as August, in fact, had those same
reports, I am not aware of –I’m not aware of that and
Mr. Meadows. .So you say “our source.” Is your source, is that because he was working for you?
Ms. Page. No, sir.
Mr. Meadows. Well, I mean, how could he be –is he exclusively your source? Ms. Page. I don’t know. If the CIA has –had Mr. Steele open as a source, I would not know that. Mr. Meadows. So if we’re talking about sources and we’re looking at sources, were you aware at the point that there was ongoing
communication with other players, i.e., Fusion GPS and others, as it relates to this confidential human source? Ms. Page. I didn’t follow your question, sir. Are you asking was I —
Mr. Meadows. Were you aware that Christopher Steele had conversations or multiple conversations with Fusion GPS and others outside of just working special intel for you?
Ms. Page. No, no, no. So let me try to be more clear.
As of August of 2016, I don’t know who Christopher Steele is. don’t know that he’s an FBI source. I don’t know what he does. I have never heard of him in all of my life. So let me just sort of be clear.
When the FBI first receives the reports that are known as the dossier from an FBI agent who is Christopher Steele’s handler in September of 2016
Mr. Meadows. Right.
Ms. Page. at that time, we do not know who –we don’t know why these reports have been generated. We don’t know for what purpose. We don’t know –we know that this is a reliable source who has
previously reported on other things. We know who he -• I don’t know
who he is personally. We know his history —
Mr. Meadows. Right.
Ms. Page. such that we know him to be reliable. And I think
we know that he’s a former intel person.

But we do not know, to the best of my recollection, why these reports have been generated, what they’re for, what they’re –why they have sort of come to us, other than here’s a reliable source and here are some things that he has gathered.
Certainly between —
Mr. Meadows. So you don’t know whether it’s a coordinated effort to get you those documents or not at that point in September?
Ms. Page. Coordinated by whom, sir?
Mr. Meadows. Anybody, other than a confidential human source saying, “Listen, I’ve got reason to be concerned and bring it to you. ”
It could have been coordinated by Fusion GPS. You don’t know.
Ms. Page. At the time that we received the documentation, no. What we have is the preexisting relationship with the source and the reliability of his prior reporting.
Mr. Meadows. Okay. So on October 16th and 19th, there’s a couple of text messages. I want to read them to you, because it’s actually text messages between you –you won’t have them in your book.
Ms. Page. Oh, okay.
Mr. Meadows. Because I actually got these from a different source. And so I’m asking you to see if you remember those so you can help authentic them. But apparently it’s a text message between you and Mr. McCabe.
Ms. Page. Okay.
Mr. Meadows. And it says: “Just called. Apparently the DAG now wants to be there and the White House wants DOJ to host. So we’re setting up a time now. We very much need to get Cohen’s view” –which we believe is probably Deputy Director of the CIA Cohen, David Cohen –“before we meet with her” –and by the “her,” I think it’s Sally Yates at that point, we’re trying to put this all together. “Better have him weigh in before this meeting. We need to speak with one voice if that is, in fact, the case.” That is October 14th.
And then on October 19th, it says: . “Hey, can you give me a call when you get out. Meeting with the White House counsel is finally set up and I want to talk about the timing things.”
Is that —
Ms. Page. Are those about Russia?
Mr. Meadows. That was my question.
Ms. Page. Oh, I’m not sure, sir. I’m not certain that it is, to be honest with you, but I’m not sure. Mr. Meadows. All right. Because it’s just a couple of days before the FI5A application.
Ms. Page. Oh. There would be no need to go to the White House or give any sort of briefing about the FI5A. So if that’s the timing concern, I don’t think that it’s related, would be my guess.
Mr. Meadows. All right. 50, as we look at this, one of the concerns that I have is that there seemed to be a whole lot of chatter back and forth in terms of between the FBI and the DOJ being at odds in terms of –and by “odds” what I mean is, you know, I guess pushing back against George Toscas and some of the others in terms of some of the opinions, based on text messages and emails.
Ms. Page. On Russia?
Mr. Meadows. On Russia.
Ms. Page. I don’t know that I agree with that assessment. The only source of frustration, really the only source of frustration that I can recall, at least in the time that I was most heavily involved in the Russia investigation –so this is from August to really the end of the year, till December of 2016 –was the sort of speed or lack thereof with respect to getting the FISA initiated. I mean, that was a source of frustration. But I don’t recall other other controversies or other disagreements or other issues.
Mr. Meadows. Yeah, because I think –and the reason why these dates on the other text messages that I ask are critical, because there’s an email from Peter Strzok to you on October the 14th. And that’s where, you know, we’ve got to keep the pressure, hurry the F up and
Ms. Page. Yeah, right. And that was definitely happening, but the White House doesn’t have anything to do with that. Mr. Meadows. And so the Stu, I haven’t heard back from Stu, is that Stu Evans who
Ms. Page. That is correct.
Mr. Meadows. So why was there a push for a FISA warrant coming from you guys and potentially less than expeditious on the –I mean, what’s your perception of why that was? Obviously, it was important enough for Peter to send you an email.
Ms. Page. Well, we sent a lot of emails.
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But separate from that, this again goes to kind of cultural differences between us and DOJ. So DOJ is necessarily going to be a little more handwringing and a little more apprehensive and a little more cautious.
Mr. Meadows. And why is that?
Ms. Page. Just the institutional differences between us, honestly. I mean, we’re the investigators, we’re hard-charging.
Mr. Meadows. The fact that they were opening up a FISA warrant on a U.S. citizen that might be attached to a —
Ms. Page. Well, almost all FISA warrants are on U.S. citizens.
Mr. Meadows. That’s correct, but that might –you didn’t let me finish —
Ms. Page. Oh, I’m sorry.
Mr. Meadows. That might be attached to a Presidential campaign.
Ms. Page. Well, he was no longer with the Presidential campaign.
But your point is taken. Certainly, this was one that, if leaked, was going to get attention.
And so I’m not necessarily even criticizing them for their handwringing. I’m just saying we had an operational reason that we wanted to get this thing up quickly with respect to the subject himself, and the Department is always going to operate with less alacrity.
Mr. Meadows. So is Stu Evans, is that his primary responsibility, was processing FISAs?
Ms. Page. So he is the head ‘ of the Office of Intelligence. The
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Office of Intelligence is the organization within the Department that writes the FISAs, that takes them to court. So he is the –he’s a DAAG, a deputy assistant Attorney General, and he is the person in charge of the entire FISA process for the Department.
Mr. Meadows. So I guess the question –and this is my last series of questions –I guess the question I would have then is, going back to August 10th, there’s text messages back and forth between you and Peter that would say, I remember what it was, Toscas already told Stu Evans everything. Sally called to set up a meeting. You already knew about the campaign individual. So there’s conversations happening on August the 10th already
Ms. Page. But that’s not about a FISA. That’s not about a FISA at that point, I don’t think. Mr. Meadows. But it was about the campaign, because it’s redacted.
Ms. Page. Right.
Mr. Meadows. I mean, it was redacted.
Ms. Page. So what that reflects, because I remember that,
because we were –we were so concerned about the fact that we were
opening this investigation and we were so concerned about leaks that
we were literally individually making decisions about who to tell and
who not to tell, because we were trying to keep it so closely held.
We had told George Toscas, because he’s sort of the senior-most career person in the National Security Division. None of us had told Stu Evans, and I don’t think any of us intended
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to tell stu Evans until which time we would actually need something from him. And so that text is a reflection of frustration, that like, great, George told Stu. That’s not what we would have done, because we were trying to keep it so close-hold.
So I don’t think it has anything to do with an actual FISA. It was more that more people are learning about this investigation and we are trying to keep it as tight as possible.
Mr. Meadows. And so what you’re saying is when the Director briefed the White House 2 days prior to that, on August the 8th, or prepared for it, actually briefed him on the 10th, that it had nothing to do with any campaign. Even though George Toscas and Stu Evans knew about it, it had –I mean, there was no mention of this at all at any time?
Ms. Page. Sir, I would be shocked. I would truly be stunned to discover that the Director had briefed the President on the substance of our investigation or even the existence of our investigation. would be –I can’t say it didn’t happen, I wasn’t there, but I would be stunned to discover that. That is just not how we —
Mr. Meadows. So when did it happen? Ultimately never? Ms. Page. I don’t know. I honestly don’t know. And to be honest with you, I guess I should clarify.
I think it’s entirely possible that the Director himself never briefed the White House about this. He just did not have that kind of –not relationship, that’s not the right word. That’s just not how he viewed us institutionally. I cannot speak to whether the
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Department ever briefed the White House about it.
Mr. Meadows. I’ll yield to John.
Mr. Ratcliffe. Ms. Page, I do want to follow this line of questioning about the FI5A application and try and determine when you were first aware of or there was a discussion of a possibility ofa FI5A warrant in connection with the Trump-Russia matter from a timing perspective. Do you recall?
Ms. Page. Maybe a month before we got it, possibly. I’m not positive. Mr. Ratcliffe. Okay. 50 the dates, the date of the FI5A application, October 21st of 2016.
The reason I’m trying to find out is we know that the predicating information that opened it was July 31st. We know on August 8th, we’ve talked about the text message about stopping Donald Trump, a text message that involved the lead investigative agent.
50 I’m wondering, do you know whether or not there had been any discussion of a FI5A applications by that time? Ms. Page. No way. You have to understand, sir, it takes a lot to get a FI5A. Mr. Ratcliffe. I know. I’m just trying –I’m trying todive in on where it is.
50 on –we know that there was the first interview conducted,
based on your prior testimony, sometime before August 11th of 2016.
Do you know if there was any discussion of a FI5A application before
or after –or before that?
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Ms. Page. Not to my knowledge.
Mr. Ratcliffe. Okay. With respect to –you talked earlier about testing the information from confidential human sources. If a confidential human source has a conversation with the subject of surveillance that would undermine the presence –I mean, the premise that anyone associated with the Trump campaign either was colluding or would be willing to collude with the Russians, is that the type of disclosure that would have to be made to the FISC?
Ms. Page. No, sir. What do you mean? We don’t have a -•Mr. Ratcliffe. Do Brady/Giglio disclosure requirements apply to the FISA court? Ms. Page. Oh, sorry. Yeah, sure. I mean, we have a duty of candor to the court.
Mr. Ratcliffe. Duty of candor.
Ms. Page. So certainly to the extent we were to find reliable information that we thought undermined a FISA application, wewould inform the court of that information.
Mr. Ratcliffe. Supposed to inform the court?
Ms. Page. To the best of my knowledge, sir, we would inform the court. Mr. Ratcliffe. No, I’m just saying the obligation is –you can’t speak to whether it was or it wasn’t. Ms. Page. I don’t know what you’re talking about. I thought –if –Mr. Ratcliffe. I’m not getting into any of the specific content
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of it. I just want to know —
Ms. Page. If –in all cases
Mr. Ratcliffe. If there is exculpatory or —
Ms. Page. –if the FBI discovers, you know, reliable information which it believes to be exculpatory or somehow affect the probable cause of the FI5A warrant, I would expect that we would provide that to the court, yes, sir.
Mr. Ratcliffe. That’s my question.
Ms. Page. Yes.
Mr . Ratcliffe. Because there would be an obligation to do that.
Ms. Page. I think so. I’m not nearly as well-versed in the FI5A rules. But I would just –I would presume that we would, because that’s how we generally operate. Mr. Ratcliffe. And you know that Brady/Giglio disclosure requirements would apply in the FI5A court?
Ms. Page. 50 Brady really doesn’t –I don’t really want to be so legalistic –but Brady is a right of a criminal defendant. 50 what I’m saying is I have no idea if it is absolutely obligatory. What I am saying is I believe that that is –would be the practice of the Department and the FBI to be fully candid.
Mr. Ratcliffe. And should have been done if there was any exculpatory information. Ms. Page. I think that that’s what we would do. I believe so, sir. Mr. Ratcliffe. Okay, great.
[106] COMMITTEE SENSITIVE On Friday, Congressman Jordan asked you about the trip that you
with Peter Strzok and three others. I don’t know if he asked you the purpose of that trip. Can you tell us the purpose of the trip?
Ms. Page. I cannot, sir.
Mr. Ratcliffe. Why not?
Ms. Page. On advice of FBI counsel, because it would get into the investigative steps we took.
Mr. Ratcliffe. Investigative steps related to the -•
Ms. Page. The Russia investigation.
Mr. Ratcliffe. –Russia investigation?
Ms. Page. Yes, sir.
Mr. Ratcliffe. Okay. Mr. Jordan also asked you about and you
reviewed with him the January 18 email that you were on with Mr. Strzok talking about the different versions of the Steele dossier involving David Corn and Glenn Simpson and others. Do you recall that?
Ms. Page. I do, sir.
Mr . Ratcliffe. Okay. That was around the same time as the first of Jim Comey’s now somewhat infamous memos of his conversations with both President-elect Trump and then President Trump. When did you first become aware of the Comey memos?
Ms. Page. I was aware of them as they were in real time. was aware of almost all of them in real time.
Mr. Ratcliffe. Okay. So you were aware of them before they became leaked to The New York Times by Daniel Richman?
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Ms. Page. I was aware of them. I reviewed most of them. I can’t say all. I reviewed most of them within a day or on the same day that they were created.
Mr. Ratcliffe. Would Peter Strzok have been –I’m sorry. Would –well, let me ask that. Would Peter Strzok have been aware of those?
Ms. Page. No, sir.
Mr. Ratcliffe. Would Andrew McCabe have been aware of those?
Ms. Page. Yes, sir. I don’t know whether Peter Strzok was aware of them or not. I did not provide them to him so —
Mr. Ratcliffe. Okay. But Andrew McCabe would have been?
Ms. Page. Yes, sir.
Mr. Ratcliffe. Okay. And was that –the fact that you would have been aware of them, were there discussions about opening an obstruction of justice case or any other case against Donald Trump prior to the firing of Jim Comey on May 9th of 2017, as reflected in the Comey memos?
Ms. Bessee. Congressman, to the extent that goes into the equities of the ongoing investigation that the special counsel is now conducting, I will instruct the witness not to answer.
Mr. Ratcliffe. Yeah, I don’t want to go into what the special counsel, whether or not they are going to do it, but I think it’s a fair –I think it’s a very fair question, Cecilia, because the former Director of the FBI has talked about it. He’s talked about it a lot. He’s given interviews about it. He has gone on TV about it. He has
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written books about it.
And he has said explicitly publicly in a congressional hearing that he wanted a special counsel to be appointed for that purpose, to investigate Donald Trump for obstruction of justice.
So I think asking her about it at this point is a very fair request.
Ms. 8essee. To the extent that it doesn’t go into what the special counsel is looking at or their gathering of evidence, I understand, Congressman, that former Director Comey has talked about the memos and has talked about whether there should be an investigation. So I just want —
Mr . Ratcliffe. I don’t want any of the details. I just want to know whether there was a discussion about the possibility of opening that prior to the firing of the Director.
Ms. Page. Obstruction of justice was not a topic of conversation during the timeframe you have described.
Mr. Ratcliffe. Okay. Then–
Ms. Page. I think. One second, sir.
[Discussion off the record.]
Ms. Page. Sir, I need to –I need to take back my prior statement. Mr. Ratcliffe. Which one? Ms. Page. Whatever the last thing I just said was. Sorry. That there were no discussions of obstruction, yeah. That is –I need to take that statement back. Mr. Ratcliffe. So there were?
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Ms. Page. Well, I think that I can’t answer this question without getting into matters which are substantively before the special counsel at this time.
Mr. Ratcliffe. Well, I think you’ve just answered it by not answering it.
Was Andy McCabe privy to those same conversations?
Ms. Page. I can’t answer this substantively, sir. I’m sorry.
Mr. Ratcliffe. Well, were these related to some charges, whether obstruction or other charges, potentially against Donald Trump?
Ms. Page. I can’t –I can’t answer that question, sir, without getting into the substance of matters that are now before the special counsel.
Mr. Ratcliffe. Again, I think you’re answering it by not answering it. Did you have knowledge about Daniel Richman’s special role for Director Comey?
Ms. Page. What do you mean, sir?
Mr . Ratcliffe. Did you know that he –or when, I guess, did you learn that he was the source through which Director Comey would communicate information to the press? Ms. Page. I learned that publicly, when it became publicly
known.
Mr. Ratcliffe. But not before that?
Ms. Page. I don’t believe so.
Mr. Ratcliffe. Did you have interactions with Daniel Richman?
[110] COMMITTEE SENSITIVE

Ms. Page. I had one interaction with him, but with respect to a going dark sort of broad legislative interest, but that’s it. That was many months prior.
Mr. Ratcliffe. Okay. So back to these Comey memos. You had conversations about the Comey memos with Andy McCabe. Did you have conversations about them with Jim Comey?
Ms. Page. I think once. I think there was one time –so, again, I guess I should make –be more clear. We didn’t talk about the Comey memos as a set, like the Comey memos. If Comey were to have a meeting that concerned him, he might come back and inform, for example, Mr. McCabe about them.
There was one time I believe in which I was part of a small group in which he came back and reported back the details of a particular meeting. Those ultimately made their way into the memos.
So I was present for at least one, possibly more, I just don’t know for sure, readouts of a meeting that he would have just had with the President, Donald Trump, and then subsequently read the memos that he created about each of these meetings.
Mr. Ratcliffe. What was it about Donald Trump that created a practice that Director Comey told us didn’t exist with President Obama?
Ms. Page. I can’t speak for Director Comey, sir.
Mr. Ratcliffe. Did this process of the FBI Director sharing information with others in the FBI about his conversations, giving readouts of his conversations with the President, was that a standard practice?
Ms. Page. That’s not unusual, if there was a need to share what had happened. He certainly did that with respect to President Obama as well.
Mr. Ratcliffe. But never documented it in a memo form?
Ms. Page. I think that’s his representation.
Mr. Ratcliffe. So you said —
Ms. Page. But I think he also answered, at least in his open testimony, that it was about the nature of the person. So I can’t –that’s –those are his words, but I can’t speak beyond that.
Mr. Ratcliffe. I might come back to that, but I want to move on to this now infamous tarmac meeting and at least get started in asking you about that.
To refresh your recollection from a timing standpoint, the meeting occurred on June the 27th of 2016 between former President Clinton and Loretta Lynch.
I want to ask you about an email on June the 38th of 2016 that Peter Strzok texted to you, if you’d look at that.
Ms. Page. June 38th, you said?
Mr. Ratcliffe. June 38th. We’re 3 days after the tarmac
meeting.
Ms. Page. Okay.
Mr. Ratcliffe. It says: Oh my God, he –I think speaking about Bill Priestap –Oh, my God, he is spinning about the tarmac meeting. Viewed in conjunction with [redacted] wants to meet at 4, have us bring lists of what we would do in ordinary circumstance, paren, easy,
referred to PC, and in this circumstance, paren, easy, referred to the
seventh floor.
Do you see that?
Ms. Page. I do.
Mr. Ratcliffe. Okay. Let’s –first of all, is Bill, is that Bill Priestap?
Ms. Page. I’m sure it is, yes.
Mr. Ratcliffe. Okay. Do you know what redacted is?
Ms. Page. I don’t.
Mr. Ratcliffe. Okay. Do you know what PC is?
Ms. Page. Public corruption —
Mr. Ratcliffe. Public corruption.
Ms. Page. –is my guess.
Mr. Ratcliffe. It’s my guess, too. So–
Ms. Page. I mean, this I think is sort of a snarky text, right? So my guess is he’s spinning in conjunction with the –maybe that is like the statement, because we know that we’re –we’re planning to do the –public announcement is sort of imminent. I’m speculating there, because I have no idea what’s under the redaction.
But I think this is mostly us just being a little unkind with respect to Bill Clinton –Bill Clinton –Bill Priestap, because he –he was a worrier. And so I think that this is more snarky, right? There’s nothing for us to do with respect to this.
Mr. Ratcliffe. Okay. But I’m trying to find out whether this is a big deal or not. You know, the Attorney General referred to the
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meeting as something she admitted cast a shadow over the integrity of the Department. It’s the reason for what you referred to earlier as a quasi-recusal or halfway recusal. It is something that Director Comey referred to as a game-changer and told the IG that it tipped the scales with respect to holding a public announcement. It sounds like Bill Priestap is spinning about it.
Was it a big deal or not?
Ms. Page. To be honest with you, sir, and I’m speaking for myself, it was a boneheaded move, certainly. But I guess investigatively, I don’t See it as a particularly big deal, because absolutely every single person on the Midyear investigation, both at the FBI and the Department, had concluded that there was no prosecution to be had here.
So it’s not as though the meeting with Bill Clinton, even no matter what was said, even taken in the worst possible light, theevidence is what the evidence is. So there’s no way to have sort of changed it.
Mr. Ratcliffe. Right.
Ms. Page. So even if, in fact, everyone’s worst possible nightmare about what may have transpired on that plane is all true, it still doesn’t change whether there’s a viable prosecution.
Mr. Ratcliffe. Right. Ms. Page. So, again, in my view, it’s bad judgment and misguided, but not actually impactful of anything in particular. Mr. Ratcliffe. Okay. So I’m going to come back to this one,
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because I think we’re about out of time. But you just said, and you said this yesterday or on Friday, but that it was not a big deal. Boneheaded but not a big deal investigatively, because every person involved with the Midyear had concluded that she wasn’t going tobe charged. Is that right?
Ms. Page. That’s correct, sir.
Mr. Ratcliffe. Okay. So if I asked you the question, was the decision made not to charge Hillary Clinton with the mishandling of classified information before or after her July 2nd, 2016, interview, the answer is what?
Ms. Page. The answer is before her July 2nd interview we had not seen evidence sufficient to charge her with a crime.
Mr. Ratcliffe. Okay.
Ms. Page. If something had changed in the July 2nd interview, then that would have all changed things. But short of an admission in that interview, there was nothing that any of us, whether at the Department or the FBI, could have anticipated that would have changed that conclusion, short of an admission or something happening —
Mr. Ratcliffe. But your answer was before the decision had been made before, that everyone had concluded.
Ms. Page. Well, you’re putting words in my mouth a little bit.
Mr. Ratcliffe. These are your words.
Ms. Page. No, I’m agreeing with –what I’m saying is a decision isn’t final until it’s final. So there was no final decision before July 2nd. But before July 2nd -•
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Mr. Ratcliffe. Okay.
Ms. Page. –it was the consensus of the investigative team, both at the Department and at the FBI, that there was not sufficient evidence to charge her with a crime.
Mr . Ratcliffe. Okay. So where we’re going to leave off is that the decision had been made before, but the final, final decision was made after is what you’re saying, to use your words.
Ms. Page. The decision isn’t final until it’s final. Mr • Ratcliffe. Okay. We’ 11 pick up with that when we cOme back. Thank you. [Recess.]
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[2:36 p.m.] Mr. Swalwell. Back on the record. Thank you, Ms. Page, again for spending the morning and afternoon
with us. I only have a few questions. Our counsel may have some, and I understand Mr. Cummings might be coming in today.
So, again, I first just want to say that, today, our President, on foreign soil, insulted the men and women of the FBI. I’m sorry that here in Congress that you’re also seeing leaders of our country insult the work that you do.
But I do think there are some fair questions, and I want to get just to some of those. Do you regret, like, some of the messages you sent or the way that you framed some of those texts? And if you could just talk about that.
Ms. Page. I do. I think that this has been an incredibly humbling experience. Obviously, these were messages sent to somebody close to me whom I intended to be private, and I think that there are few people on this planet who would want their private messages released publicly, regardless of what they said.
I think I’m entitled to the views that I’m entitled to, and I’m entitled to express those views both publicly and privately. But I would have made different decisions had I thought about what the possible repercussions could have been.
I can’t do it over again. I can only learn from it. Mr. Swalwell. Did you ever –were you ever part of a criminal prosecution where you so detested the defendant because of what they
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did or who they hurt and you had to set aside those feelings and just stick to the four corners of the evidence?
Ms. Page. 50 I actually spoke about this at length on Friday, Mr. Swalwell. In fact, not just me but I think I can speak for many people at the FBI and the Department that we often loathe the subject of our investigations. And we generally do not look kindly on criminals in general and reserve plenty of harsh language for the people that we investigate.
But we, regardless and in every instance, put our personal feelings, both about them individually or the criminal activity that they are accused of, we always put it aside and conduct investigations independently and fairly.
Mr. Swalwell. Did you ever have an investigation where you received exculpatory evidence and, you know, you’ve got a bad guy and you really want to make sure that justice is done and then you get the evidence and you’re like, crap, like, if I turn this over, it’s going to make the case harder, if I keep it and I don’t tell anyone, we’ve got a better chance of a conviction, but I know what it means if I don’t turn it over? Have you ever had to make those decisions as a prosecutor?
Ms. Page. So they’re not usually quite as stark, but, absolutely, you often have information which could be exculpatory or certainly could just simply be damaging to your case, and it is your obligation as a prosecutor, it is your obligation to the fairness to the defendant and the fairness in the system, to turn that information
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over.
So that is something that happens regularly, and it is a part of our being, it’s a part of our identity and the roles that we abide by in order to —
Mr. Swalwell. Regardless of how you feel about the defendant.
Ms. Page. Of course.
Mr. Swalwell. In the Clinton case, were you the sole lawyer
making decisions about the direction of the case?
Ms. Page. I was not making decisions about the direction of the case at all. I was a lawyer supporting the Deputy Director. We had multiple lawyers in OGC who supported the investigation, and, of course, it was run by prosecutors at the Department.
Mr. Swalwel1. How many lawyers could you estimate were involved in the Clinton case
Ms. Page. So there were
Mr. Swalwell. on the on your side.
Ms. Page. On the FBI side, there were two primary lawyers who were involved. There was a lawyer who was involved on the filter team. And then there were five prosecutors who had either regular or semiregular involvement at the Department, and then their management.
Mr. Swalwell. And on the decision to open the Russia
investigation, how many lawyers were involved in that decision?
Ms. Page. The decision to open the investigation? I mean, the
general counsel was involved, the deputy general counsel was involved.
At least, probably –the decision to open? I’m not sure myself.
Mr. Swalwell. Is it fair to say you were not -•
Ms. Page. No, no.
Mr. Swalwell. –the person or lawyer that -•
Ms. Page. No.
Mr. Swalwell. –signed off?
Ms. Page. I did not make any decisions with respect to opening the Russia investigation.
Mr. Swalwell. Can you speak to –well, Bob Mueller. How long did you work with Mr. Mueller?
Ms. Page. So I went over for a 4S-day detail.
Mr. Swalwell. Oh, I just mean in your career.
Ms. Page. Oh. So I didn’t have –I had limited interaction with Mr. Mueller when he was the Director of the FBI.
Mr. Swalwell. In your limited interaction and the discussion you had with colleagues, can you speak to his character for truthfulness and integrity?
Ms. Page. He is unassailable on those grounds. He is an unbelievably upstanding, honest, rule-following, hard-charging, thoughtful, fair individual.
Mr. Swalwell. And with respect to other lawyers and agents on the special counsel’s team, are those individuals that you had worked with in some —
Ms. Page . . Yes.
Mr. Swalwell. manner?
Ms. Page. Some of them, yes, sir.
COMMITTEE SENSITIVE

Mr. Swalwell. And is there anyone on that team that you have concerns about their integrity, their character for truthfulness?
Ms. Page. No, sir. And, in fact, at least two of them I’ve worked quite closely with, and I know both to be incredibly bright, incredibly fair, honest, brilliant prosecutors.
Mr. Swalwell. And did you observe during the time on the team any, you know, cafeteria talk, any prejudging of the direction of the Russia investigation?
Ms. Page. No, sir.
Mr. Swalwell. I don’t have anything else. I’ll defer back to counsel.
Thank you, Ms. Page.
Ms. Page. You’re welcome.
BY MS. KIM:
Q Thank you, Ms. Page.
I’d like to ask you about several FBI employees who are mentioned in the inspector general’s report. To the extent that it asks about things of which you have no knowledge, please let me know.
This, as you will see, will turn out to be a process of elimination. To be totally candid with you, there is an individual, Sally Moyer, whose name has been repeatedly brought up in connection with these aliases. And I just want to confirm whether you can identify Sally Moyer as any of the aliases named in the inspector general’s report.
A I think you need to ask that question more specifically.
COMMITTEE SENSITIVE

Q Yes. Exactly. And so I will attempt to do so.
A Okay.
Q The inspector general’s report discussed instant messages

between two FBI agents, agent 1 and agent 5. The two were in a preexisting romantic relationship.
As I understand it, Sally Moyer is not an FBI agent. Is that correct?
A That is correct.
Q So do you have any reason to believe that Sally Moyer is agent 1 or agent 5?
A I know who agent 1 and agent 5 are, and Sally Moyer is not agent 1 or agent 5.
Q Thank you.
The inspector general’s report also discusses FBI attorney 2 as an individual who sent instant messages of what the inspector general called a political nature. That attorney, FBI attorney 2, is referred to throughout with male pronouns.
Do you know if the FBI attorney 2 is Sally Moyer? A I also know who FBI Attorney General 2 is, and FBI attorney 2 is not Sally Moyer.
Q Thank you.
Ms. Shen. Okay, Ms. Page, I’m going to introduce a few text messages in which it appears that you and Mr. Strzok are discussing the Russians and, sort of, their attempts at espionage and just kind of ask some of the context behind it.
COMMITTEE SENSITIVE
[Page Exhibit No. 9
Was marked for identification.]
BY MS. SHEN:
Q So, for exhibit 9, I believe, if you can direct your attention to the bottom of the page. So I’m looking at the second-to-last text on July 18th at 10:54.
Okay. So that text reads –and I believe this text is sent from you
A Oh, no, I don’t think so.
Q Oh, I’m sorry. The first text is
A Yeah.
Q Sorry. The first text is sent by Mr. Strzok, and it reads: And fuck the cheating motherfucking Russians. Bastards. I hate them.
I’m sorry. I’m sorry.
And in response, you write: I’m sorry. Me too.
Ms. Page, do you recall sending that text?
A The “me too”? Yeah.
Q The “me too,” yes. And do you recall under what circumstances that exchange was sent? Was there any particular context or issue that it was responding to? A I honestly don’t remember. But I do always hate the Russians, so -•
Q Okay.
Has Mr. Strzok ever communicated to you in other instances his hatred for the Russians?
COMMITTEE SENSITIVE
A Uh-huh, yes. I mean, most everybody who works counterintelligence at the FBI has pretty strong feelings about the Russian Federation. So this is not an unusually held view.
Q Okay. So, generally speaking, at the FBI, you’ve heard other instances across the agency where agents or officials have expressed their hatred for the Russians as well?
A Russia poses the most severe existential threat to Western democracy in the world. So for those of us who care about democracy and for those of us who think America is great, we have pretty strong feelings about the Russians.
Q Okay. Thank you.
[Page Exhibit No. 19
Was marked for identification.]
BY MS. SHEN:
Q I’d now like to introduce another text message from

July 31st, 2916, as exhibit 19. And if you can direct your attention to the top of the page this time –I’m sorry, let me correct that. The first text message would be July 39th, 2916.
A Uh-huh.
Q So I believe that first text message is from you, correct?
A That’s right, yes.
Q So a portion redacted. So ends the sentence: Hate them.

I think they’re probably the worst. Very little I find redeeming about this even in history. A couple of good writers and artists I guess. And then redaction.
COMMITTEE SENSITIVE
In response to that, Mr. Strzok responds, with a redaction: Fucking conniving, cheating savages at statecraft, athletics, you name
it. I’m glad on I’m Team USA.
Okay. Ms. Page, do you recall writing tho se texts?
A I do.
Q Okay. And do you recall any particul ar context those texts
were made around?
A I don’t.
Q So-•
A I mean, this is -•we’ve just opened -• or, you know, we’re

about to open the Russia investigation, so it is very much, you know, on the forefront of all of our minds. So it would not surprise me if it’s a reflection of that. But, as I said, this is an enduring sentiment for people who are in the intelligence community.
Q Well, in the intelligence community, I imagine there are –you know, there are countries other than Russia who engage in espionage efforts. And so -•
A There are countries other than Russia who engage in espionage efforts, but there are probably no other countries who are more singularly focused on the destruction of Western ideals around the world.
So it’s true, other countries engage in espionage, and other countries steal, and other countries lie. But I wouldn’t say that other countries do it the way that Russia does it and have as a goal, sort of, creating fractions within the Western alliance in order to,
COMMITTEE SENSITIVE
you know~ ascend to dominance the way that Russia does.
Q So would it be fair to say that Russia’s espionage efforts are just far more of a threat to the U.S. national security than some other countries’ espionage efforts?
A They are one of our most pernicious and dangerous threats.
Q Okay.
In Mr. Strzok’s text~ he refers to them as~ quote~ “cheating.” We’re in an unclassified setting~ so I wouldn’t want to go there~ but can you describe some examples of what he may be referring to or just generally what Russia has done to be cheating?
A Well~ I mean~ look at the doping scandals in the Olympic Committee stuff. Look at the effort”to get the World Cup in Russia that was just recently completed. I mean~ they cheat.
Q And in terms of statecraft~ again~ in unclassified setting~ are there certain examples of Russian statecraft that you find~ you know~ particularly egregious?
A I mean~ not beyond what I’ve already~ sort of~ attempted to describe. Q And then the last comment~ Mr. Strzok~ he says: I’m glad I’m on Team USA.
Would you agree that~ for example~ investigating the Russians for their attempts to interfere with the U. S. election would be an example of being on Team USA?
A Right. I mean~ this is just being proud about being Americans. Right? We want to spread American values and American
COMMITTEE SENSITIVE

democracy around the world, and we think that we live in the best country in the world. And so this is simply a statement of pride and one that is in contrast to the way that the Russian Federation operates.
Q So, last Friday, the special counsel’s investigation, it became public that they indicted 12 members of the Russian military intelligence, the GRU. Are you familiar with the report?
A I read about it, yes.
Q Okay. The GRU, they are Russian military intelligence, which means President Putin would be in charge of them. Is that correct?
A That’s my understanding.
Q And so any attempts that the Russian military intelligence would have of interfering with the U.S. Presidential election, President Putin would be aware of that. Do you believe that to be true?
A Ask me that question again, please.
Q Okay. Sorry. I’ll rephrase. Would President Vladimir Putin be aware of any attempts the GRU had in interfering with the U.S. Presidential election?
A I’m –President Putin is the President of his country and certainly is in charge of his intelligence apparatus.
Q Okay.
A I don’t want to answer that question with more specificity.
Q Fair enough. I think the point I’m just -•
A Okay.
Q –getting at is that, as the President of Russia, he would
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be the head of the Russian military intelligence.
A I would agree with that.
Q Okay.
So, actually, just earlier today, reports have come out from President Trump’s meeting, summit with President Putin, and I’m just going to read to you from a Washington Post article from 12:49p.m. today.
So the title of the article is “Putin Again Denies Russian Interference in the 2016 U.S. Election. Trump Calls Probe a Disaster for Our Country.”
So the article reads: After Putin said his government played no role in trying to sabotage the U.S. election, Trump offered no pushback and went on to condemn the Justice Department’s investigation of Russian interference as, quote, a disaster for our country.
Ms. Page, do you believe that the Justice Department’s investigation of Russian interference is a disaster for our country?
A I do not.
Q Okay.
So it goes on to say: Putin insisted publicly-that the, quote, Russian state has never interfered and is not going to interfere in internal American affairs, unquote. And Trump declined to dispute these assertions, instead saying that Putin, quote, has an interesting idea, unquote, about the issue of interference.
Now, Ms. Page, it is my understanding that the U.S. intelligence
community unanimously concluded that the Russian state did attempt to
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interfere in the U.S. 2016 Presidential election. Is that also your understanding?
A Yes, it is.
Q Okay. And, Ms. Page, are you inclined to believe Putin’ s denial that Russia ever interfered, or are you inclined to believe in the U.S. intelligence community’s assessment?
A As a part of the –as a former part of the U. S. intelligence community, I will go with the intelligence community assessment.
Q Okay. Thank you.
Later in the article, it also says: Trump says that he holds, quote, both countries responsible, unquote, for the frayed relations between the two nations and attacked Special Counsel Robert S. Mueller Ill’s investigation.
Ms. Page, do you believe that the United States is responsible for the frayed relations between the United States and Russia? A Well, we’re responsible to the extent we’re not going to accept their meddling in a U.S. election. I suppose so. Q Okay. Well, would you blame Robert Mueller’s investigation for frayed relations with Russia?
A No.
Q Okay.
And this is the last one, I promise. The article also goes on to say: In response to the questions, Trump said that both countries were to blame for the deterioration of relations. Quote, I do feel that we have both made mistakes. He added that, quote, there was no
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collusion, unquote, between his campaign and Russia, and he lamented that the special counsel’s investigation into the matter has had an impact on U.S.-Russian relations. Quote, I think the probe has been a disaster for our country, unquote. He said, quote, it’s ridiculous, what’s going on with the probe, unquote.
Ms. Page, are you aware of anything ridiculous going on in Special Counsel Mueller’s probe?
A No.
Q Okay. Thank you. I think that’s all I have.
BY MS. KIM: Q I think this might be the last tranche of questions I have for you, Ms. Page. I’d like to ask you about Director Comey.
You spoke earlier in general terms about Special Counsel Mueller. Can you explain to me how long you worked in proximity with Director Comey?
A So it would cover the span of time that I worked for Deputy Director McCabe. So, prior to February 2016, I certainly had interactions with Mr. Comey, but, once I started working for Mr. McCabe in the context of Mr. McCabe being Deputy Director, myinteractions with Mr. Comey became far more frequent.
Q And can you describe for me Mr. Comey’s general character and honesty as you understood them?
A He is a man of enormous integrity. I am a better lawyer and a better person for having, sort of, learned from his examples. He is obviously an extraordinary communicator, but he’s also just a very
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good person and is thoughtful about how to approach problems and is a man of unassailable integrity, in my view.
Q To your knowledge, has Director Comey ever lied to you?
A No.
Q Are you personally aware of any instances where Director

Comey was shown to have lied or been knowingly untruthful?
A Never.
Q Overall, do you have any reason to doubt the accuracy of Director Comey’s oral or written representations of the facts from when he was the FBI Director?
A No, not at all.
Q Have you followed the recent press coverage of Director Comey’s public descriptions of his meetings with President Trump? A Yes. Q And you said you had –usually you had –you have firsthand
knowledge of Director Comey’s memoranda that he kept to document those meetings. Is that correct?
A So I either in one or two instances was present for his initial retelling of the meeting, and in most other instances Iwas provided with his memo to review in real-time, like, shortly after his production of those memos.
Q Have you noted any discrepancies between Director Comey’s contemporaneous recollectio~s of the facts on one hand and his public representation of those facts on the other hand?
A No.
Q Are you generally familiar with Director Comey’s testimony to the Senate Intelligence Committee about his interactions with President Trump?
A I am.
Q Do you have any reason to believe that Director Comey did not –I’m sorry, let me put that in the affirmative. Do you believe that Director Comey accurately shared with Senate Intelligence Committee his memory of his interactions with President Trump?
A Absolutely, yes. Q I imagine you are fairly familiar with the inspector general’s report. Is that correct? A I have not read it all. I hope to never do so. But I am familiar with parts of it, yes.
Q On June 16th, President Trump tweeted: The IG report totally destroys James Comey and all of his minions, including the great lovers Peter Strzok and Lisa Page, who started the disgraceful witch hunt against so many innocent people. It will go down as a dark and dangerous period in American history.
To your knowledge, did the inspector general’s report contain any information discrediting the special counsel’s probe?
A No.
Q And are you aware of the inspector general’s report destroying anything about Director Comey’s ability to testify as a witness in the special counsel’s probe? A No.
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Ms. Kim. I think that ends our questioning for this round. Thank you.
[Recess.]
Mr. Ratcliffe. All right. Back on the record.
So, Ms. Page, when we left off, I was asking you –well, I asked you a q~estion based on the answer that you’d given, and I asked you whether a decision had been made to charge Hillary Clinton –not to charge Hillary Clinton before or after her July 2nd, 2016, interview. And your first answer was before. You said something to the effect of, because every person –I’m paraphrasing –because virtually every person on the Midyear Exam team had concluded that she wasn’t going to be charged.
And then -•
[Phone ringing.]
Mr. Meadows. You can tell a lot about a man by his ringtone.
Ms. Page. Will it say “boing, boing” on the transcript?
Mr. Ratcliffe. But then, in fairness to you, Ms. Page, you qualified that a little bit and said, well, a final-final decision was made after. I want to give you a chance to be clear.
Ms. Page. So the word –and I don’t mean to be overly lawyerly, but it comes naturallyJ so forgive me. The word “decision” suggests the finality. And my only point is that before the July 2nd interview the uniform view was that there was not sufficient evidence to bring any charges against Hillary Clinton.That’s not a final decision, because it’s not a final decision. But to that point, there was
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insufficient evidence to charge her with any crime. And that was uniformly agreed to by both the FBI individuals involved and the DOJ individuals involved.
But that, certainly, in the event, unlikely was our estimation, but in the event that there was some admission or some other revelation which changed our assessment, we were all open to that possibility.
Mr. Ratcliffe. Right. But you talked about –you started your answer before about, “to be candid,” and I think that’s an important word, because “candor” has a specific meaning when you’re talking about an FBI agent, right? Candor and lack of candor?
Ms. Page. Everybody at the Department has an obligation to candor, yes.
Mr . Ratcliffe. Right. And you gave a very long explanation for, you know, the decision and before, and you made reference to the discussions. We know this went all the way back to a memo –at least, a memo drafted by Director Comey on May the 2nd of 2016. And there were multiple drafts and a lot of conversation. All of that, right?
Ms. Page. That’s correct.
Mr. Ratcliffe. What is a lack of candor for –what does that mean in the context of anyone associated with the FBI when they’re talking to an investigator?
Ms. Page. That they’re being untruthful?
Mr. Ratcliffe. A lack of candor?
Ms. Page. Yeah. A lack of candor means that they’re being untruthful.
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Mr. Ratcliffe. Oh, untruthful. I thought you said being
truthful.
Ms. Page. Oh, no. Sorry.
Mr. Ratcliffe. I’m sorry. I misheard you.

Ms. Page. That’s okay. That’s okay. Yeah.
Mr. Ratcliffe. Or that they’re leaving out material facts, right? Only telling part of the story?
Ms. Page. Sure. Yes.
Mr. Ratcliffe. Okay. Okay.
The reason I ask is I asked that same question that I asked of you, that you gave a very long explanation, went into great detail about a great many factors that impacted it, I asked that same question to Director Comey under oath, did you make the decision before or after, and his answer was after.
He didn’t explain it at all. He didn’t qualify it at all. He didn’t give any context to it. He didn’t discuss number of decisions. He didn’t say, well, we made it after but everyone had concluded long before.
Do you have any reason to give me any explanation or justification for why Director Comey wouldn’t have given that information to congressional investigators or while under oath to Members of Congress?
Ms. Page. I don’t know, sir.
Mr. Ratcliffe. Okay.
Ms. Page. I can’t answer that.
Mr. Ratcliffe. We were talking about the tarmac meeting, as

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well. And I was asking you about this email on June the 30th of 2016 that related to Bill Priestap. And you gave me the context that it was, to use your words, of being a little bit unkind.
But I did want to ask, the reference to what we would do in ordinary circumstance, in parentheses Peter Strzok says, “Easy, refer to PC,” which you and I both think is “public corruption.” Was he making a joke there? I’m just trying to find out —
Ms. Page. Yeah. I mean, I think that you have to take this whole text in the, sort of, somewhat snarky tone in which it’s intended. Because there’s nothing to do, right? Like, as I sort of described already, the investigation is what the investigation is. It is virtually over. We have seen what the evidence fails to, sort of, demonstrate.
And so I think, as I said –and I’m certainly not, sort of, proud of this, but I think that it’s more a reflection of, “Oh, gosh, he’s worrying again” —
Mr. Ratcliffe. Right.
Ms. Page. –and this is, sort of, not a basis to be worried about. And so I think that’s why you have the, like -•
Mr. Ratcliffe. Right. And all —
Ms. Page. –flippant responses at the end.
Mr. Ratcliffe. Okay. And all of that is somewhat reinforced by the text message that we’ve talked about before that you sent the next day on July 1st about: She’s not exactly a profile in courage because she knows that Hillary Clinton is not going to be charged.
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Ms. Page. Right. I think they’re of a kind.
Mr. Ratcliffe. Yeah.
But, nevertheless, this tarmac meeting, obviously it generated a lot of attention. And, again, the reason that the Director said that he did the unprecedented step of acting as investigator and prosecutor on July the 5th and, she said, cast a shadow.
The day after you sent the profile-in-courage text message was July 2nd, which was the interview of Hillary Clinton, correct?
Ms. Page. This says the 1st here, but I take you at -•
Mr. Ratcliffe. Yeah, I think —
Ms. Page. –that you have –you know, I know some of them are in UTe and some of them aren’t, so I –yeah. Mr. Ratcliffe. I’ll represent to you that it occurred on Saturday, July the 2nd of 2016.
Ms. Page. Okay.
Mr. Ratcliffe. And I’ve only got one copy of this, but I’ve got a document I want to show you and just –it’s essentially, I think you’d call it an LHM, or a letterhead memorandum, which is a summary of –supposed to be a summary of the interview based on the 302s of the people that were in the room.
Ms. Page. It’s a summary of, sort of, the investigation, of, sort of, all the investigative steps and what we found. Mr. Ratcliffe. Yeah. But specifically in connection with her interview on July the 2nd of 2016. Ms. Page. Okay.
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Mr. Ratcliffe. Yeah. Well, I mean, you look at –did you play a role in preparing that?
Ms. Page. I–
Mr. Ratcliffe. Because there were some text messages, I thought, where you —
Ms. Page. Yeah. So I did not playa role in preparing it. We went through, like, 52 billion drafts of this thing, like, from “a” to “the” to, you know, like, all kinds of changes, because we wanted to be as perfect as we could get it. So I am certain I am on a jillion drafts as well. I am not positive I ever read the entire thing. I started to a couple of times, but other things —
Mr. Ratcliffe. Okay. Well, I went through it, and I read it a couple times, and 1’11 represent to you that the word “tarmac” doesn’t appear in there or “Loretta Lynch” doesn’t appear in there. And I -•
Ms. Page. That makes sense to me.
Mr. Ratcliffe. It does?
Ms. Page. That’s not –yes. So, I mean, I believe you. I have no way to disagree with you. But those were not investigative steps. This was not designed to, sort of, be every single thing that happened during the course of the Clinton email investigation. This is designed to be an assessment of what the FBI did and what the FBI found. And the tarmac incident doesn’t really playa role with respect to those two things.
Mr. Ratcliffe. So –and that’s your opinion. You’re entitled to it. I just want to be clear, though. So, if a meeting took place
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5 days before the interview that everyone in the country is talking about, in terms of it being inappropriate, casting a shadow, calling for a quasi-recusal, that involves the husband of the subject of the investigation and the boss of five people from the Department of Justice that are in the room, you think it’s not unusual that someone wouldn’t ask a question of the subject of the investigation about that meeting that had occurred 5 days before in public view?
Ms. Page. Well, so that’s not what you asked me. You asked me why it wasn’t in here. And so that’s, sort of, my reflection of why that statement isn’t in here.
With respect to why they didn’t ask her –you’re asking why the prosecutors didn’t ask her a question in tt’le interview? I can’t answer that except that Mr. –it kind of goes to the point I was making earlier. If we were close to charging her and then suddenly this tarmac meeting happens and now we are not going to charge her, then I agree with you, and then we have a serious controversy on our hands.
But I guess I just don’t –I fully understand and remember and appreciate the firestormit created. I completely agree with you on that. But if there was a. a percent evidence the day before the tarmac meeting and there’s a.a percent evidence the day after the tarmac meeting, it doesn’t change anything. It’s a terrible optic, but it doesn’t change the outcome of the investigation.
So I was not a part of a decision to ask or not ask. I didn’t review the outlines with respect to whether to ask or not ask. I don’t know who made the decision whether to ask or not ask. I’m just saying,
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in my opinion, it’s not that weird to me. I’m not sure what you would
get out of that question.
Mr. Ratcliffe. Well, I guess —
Ms. Page. Because there still wasn’t sufficient evidence to charge her.
Mr. Ratcliffe. –what you’d get –if the stated premise that everyone seems to have given is that she’s not going to be charged unless she lies in her interview, she can’t lie if she isn’t asked the questions.
Ms. Page. But she wasn’t at this meeting. Her husband was.
Mr. Ratcliffe. I
Ms. Page. Right? So what is —
Mr . Ratcliffe. I guess you could confirm that if you asked her,
just like you could confirm what they talked about and whether or not there was any number of discussions.
Anyway, you’re entitled to your opinion. I just wanted to ask you about it because I’d seen something in these text messages that indicate that you were involved in this.
And do you recall some text messages with Agent Strzok about some of the 302s being inflammatory and not letting Congress have those?
Ms. Page. Yes.
Mr. Ratcliffe. Okay. What do you recall about that?
Ms. Page. So that was when we were starting our production of the materials that Congress had requested. So it’s not so much –and, ultimately, they were all turned over anyway. They were emails which
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were –or emails, excuse me. They were 302s which were –didn’t ultimately speak to any of the evidence that we found. They were inflammatory, they were certainly —
Mr. Ratcliffe. What do you recall about them? How were they inflammatory? Because I don’t know that they have been turned over.
Ms. Page. So one is the quid pro quo. I mean, that we’ve gone –that’s gone, sort of, to the end of the Earth, the Brian –what was his last name? McCauley maybe?
So this was the claim –sorry. I haven’t thought about this in a while, so I don’t want to get this wrong. So this was the claim that, very early in the Clinton –in the –shortly after opening the investigation –no. Sorry. Before that. Sorry, let me think about this for a second.
When the State Department was first, I think, complying with either their FOIA or something and had first determined that there may be classified information among the emails which had been collected, there was an allegation that Patrick Kennedy, who was then the Under Secretary for Management, I think, at the State Department, had reached out to Brian McCauley, I think is his last name –but I could be getting it wrong –who was an executive in our International Operations Division, and had essentially –the allegation was that if McCauley could get the classification of this particular document changed, that the FBI could get the legat spots that they wanted at certain embassies or something like that. I don’t –I might be getting some of this wrong.
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And so that had been investigated. I think both individuals had been interviewed by the FBI. The classification of the document never changed. The legat spots were never granted. And so it was sort of a wash.
So the point was we were trying to prioritize the 302s and the documents which actually went to the underlying decision not to prosecute. Those were not those. And so, in terms of having limited resources and trying to prioritize the things which would be most salient to Congress’ review of our investigation, the McCauley stuff –there was something else; I can’t remember now what it is. But the, sort of, sideshow things that didn’t actually affect what the outcome was or what the evidence was in the investigation were, sort of, deprioritized.
So, ‘I mean, that’s all that’s meant to reflect, ultimately. It’s obviously a text message, so it doesn’t have all of that context and background, but that’s what that’s a reflection of.
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[3:11 p.m.]
Mr. Ratcliffe. Okay. I want to go back the Comey memos that we were talking about. And you were relating sort of the process that you and Andy McCabe and others, apparently, would have a conversation with Director Comey about the material and what became his memos as a readout.
Did I miss anyone besides you and Andy McCabe?
Ms. Page. It’s a very small number.
Mr. Ratcliffe. Okay. Who else can you think of?
Ms. Page. I think the Director’s testimony was Jim Rybicki –and this is from memory, so it’s in some hearing transcript somewhere –Jim Rybicki, Mr. McCabe, Mr. Ghattas, maybe Mr. Bowdich, and myself.
There may have been one or two other times in which one or two other people may have been aware of a particular –hearing a readout of a particular memo –I’m sorry; let me correct one thing. The one exception to the list I just provided was that Mr. Comey did brief his senior Crossfire Hurricane team of the meeting in early January when he’s there with Clapper and Brennan and the rest of the –Admiral Rogers, and the head of the –the leaders of the intelligence community briefing him on the intelligence community’s assessment of the Russian interference and the Russia active measures report.
The memo that he drafted following that meeting, in which he also –is that public? –let me stop there –the memo that he drafted, he did brief the sort of senior Crossfire team of the events.
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We had talked about it in advance of that meeting, and he gave a readout of, you know, a debrief following that meeting. So that’s the only exception in terms of the Comey memos that had a more expanded personnel list, to my knowledge.
Mr. Ratcliffe. Okay. And so was the discussion –before you had talked about, and you said, when, you know, when we talk about concerns that the Director had –were those concerns about the topics that the President was talking about, or were they concerns about the President?
Ms. Page. I don’t know what you’re talking about. I’m sorry. What do you mean? What concerns I had?
Mr. Ratcliffe. Giving the answer, you said he would bring us together to talk about –from his meetings with the President –concerns that came about.
And I’m wondering were they concerns about topics that the President was talking about, or was the concern the President?
Ms. Page. Well, I only recall being –I think I was only present for one –other than the January one about the ICA, I think I was only present for one meeting in which he kind of had described what had just transpired. I don’t remember which one that was of the memos that I’ve read and was privy to. I just don’t remember which particular one I was present for. I just remember being present for one of them.
Mr. Ratcliffe. Okay. Well, do you remember I asked you before about an obstruction of justice as a topic, and you gave an answer, and then you came back and said: I need to take my answer back.
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Ms. Page. That answer back, yeah.
Mr. Ratcliffe. But generally talked about certain matters, I guess. Let me ask you this: I asked you the other day about a text message that Peter Strzok sent you the day that Jim Comey got fired where he said: And we need to open the case we’ve been waiting on now while Andy is acting.
And you explained: It didn’t have anything to do with when Andy was acting, but the case we were waiting on. Is that the same information that’s reflected in some of the Comey memos?18Usc924c@@
Ms. Page. Just a moment, please.
[Discussion off the record.]
Ms. Page. Mr. Ratcliffe, I’m sure this is going to be an unsatisfying answer, but I have reviewed all the Comey memos, as I said, I have read most of them in real time, at the time that they were written. I don’t have any basis to disagree with the claims made in the Comey memos, but with respect to what steps we may or may not have taken, based either on those claims or following the Director’s firing, on advice of FBI counsel, I can’t answer that at this time.
Mr. Ratcliffe. Okay. Your inability to answer tells me a lot. And what it tells me is inconsistent. And what I’m trying to get at, it is inconsistent with what Jim Comey has admitted that he told the President, I think, that he wasn’t under investigation during that timeframe.
Maybe
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Ms. Page. That is not inconsistent, sir.
Mr. Ratcliffe. Okay. So he wasn’t under investigation, but that doesn’t mean there was a discussion going on about potential crimes involving the FBI Director’s senior leadership team. That’s what you’re telling us?
Ms. Page. I am not telling you that. But the statement, if taken as a hypothetical, somebody could not be under investigation, but there still could be discussions about potential criminal activity, and that is totally consistent with FBI policies and would not be unusual with respect to any investigation.
Mr. Ratcliffe. Except the unusual part about memorializing it in memos that hadn’t been done with other Presidents, right? Ms. Page. I don’t know what you’re asking me. I’m sorry. How do you –what?
Mr. Meadows. Well, let me follow up, if you don’t mind.
Are you aware of any other time that Director Comey memorialized conversations with President Obama? Ms. Page. I think he has testified that he did not do that. That’s correct.
Mr. Meadows. Okay. And so did you not find it unique that he would be memorializing these conversations, and they weren’t in totality of the all the conversations you had, but he memorialized these particular conversations. Did you not find that unique?
Ms. Page. I think that he did memorialize all of his conversations with -•
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Mr. Meadows. President-elect.
Ms. Page. President-elect or President Trump. I think that’s been his testimony. I wouldn’t have known that he did or didn’t do it beforehand, to be honest with you. So I don’t know that I can answer your question.
Mr. Ratcliffe. Did Director Comey have any conversations with you about the purpose behind him creating these memos?
Ms. Page. No.
Mr. Ratcliffe. Okay. Did Andy McCabe create any memos?
Ms. Page. Yes.
Mr. Ratcliffe. Tell us about those.
Ms. Page. I can’t do that, sir.

Mr. Ratcliffe. Okay . Without –I’m going to respect –try and respect as much of this as I can, but given the fact that you’ve acknowledged that there were memos or at least a memo, I want to find out as much as I can about the timing and the circumstances of it, even if you won’t disclose the content of it.
So, first of all, let me ask you, are you aware of the content of the memo or memos?
Ms. Page. I am.
Mr. Ratcliffe. Were you involved in the preparation of the memo or memos?
Ms. Page. I reviewed some of them, probably not all, but some of them, mostly for like spelling and typographical things before he finalized them.
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Mr. Ratcliffe. Okay. You say “them,” so there were multiple memos. Do you know approximately how many memos?
Ms. Page. Let’s be more specific about memos with whom, if we could.
Mr. Ratcliffe. Memos with respect to President Trump.
Ms. Page. Just meetings with President Trump?
Mr. Ratcliffe. Just what?
Ms. Page. Just meetings with President Trump?
Mr. Ratcliffe. Meetings, conversations, interactions, communications. Ms. Page. With the President? Mr. Ratcliffe. With President Trump? Ms. Page. There’s a very small number. I’m not certain, but one
or two. I’m not certain.
Mr . Ratcliffe. And can you tell me anything about the timing of those memos? When they were created and the circumstances under which they were created, without getting into the content?
Ms. Page. With respect to those one or two, to the best of my recollection, he would have created them shortly in time following whatever interaction he may have had.
Mr. Ratcliffe. And was it his interaction necessarily or could it have been memos about –I’m trying to find out, again, the timing of this. Is this sort of related to the firing of Jim Comey or other events?
Ms. Page. I’m sorry. Ask me that question again.
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Mr. Ratcliffe. I’m just trying to determine the context of now what I’m going to refer to as the McCabe memos and when they were created and what the circumstances of the McCabe memos were.
So can you give me a –when was the first McCabe memo created, if you can give me the general timeframe and the circumstances under which it was created.
Ms. Page. I honestly, I could not guess at a date. I do not think that the Deputy Director had any interactions with the President of the United States until after he became the Acting Director.
,Mr. Ratcliffe. Okay.
Ms. Page. But that is my –I am speculating about that, as I sit here today.
Mr. Ratcliffe. Okay. You’re not certain about that.
Do you know whether or not there were any McCabe memos during the Obama Administration? Ms. Page. Not to my knowledge –I’m sorry. Memorializing interaction with President Obama?
Mr. Ratcliffe. Yes.
Ms. Page. No, not to my knowledge.
Mr. Ratcliffe. Okay. What’s your understanding of why Deputy Director or Acting Director McCabe generated a memo or memos
memorializing his interactions with President Trump?
Ms. Page. I’m not really crazy about speaking for them. I would say, in general, that an FBI agent memorializes the substance of a conversation when he thinks there is a reason to memorialize it, whether
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it is the substance, whether it is the circumstances of the meeting,
whether it is the nature of the interaction.
We write something down when it seems worth writing down.
Mr . Ratcliffe. Were the McCabe memos ever disclosed outside the FBI, to your knowledge?
Ms. Page. Not outside the Department, to my knowledge.
Mr. Ratcliffe. Would the special counsel have access to the McCabe memos? Ms. Page. I –yes. Mr . Ratcliffe. Would the McCabe memos be relevant to the matters that the special counsel is investigating?
Ms. Page. Yes.
Mr. Ratcliffe. You mentioned that there were other memos that –I I m not sure I understood. These ones that we I re talking about related to his interactions with the President, but you intimated that there were other McCabe memos that were responsive to my first overarching question.
Can you tell me what those memos relate to? How you would characterize those?
Ms. Page. Mr. McCabe memorialized certain interactions with either White House personnel or others when there was something noteworthy to memorialize, sir.
Mr. Ratcliffe. Did either Deputy Director McCabe or Acting Director McCabe, whatever capacity, did he discuss the memos, to your knowledge with Jim Comey?
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Ms. Page. Certainly, the ones that were written before the Director was fired, I would expect so. He would not have discussed them, any memos that he drafted after the Director was fired because the Director was no longer a government employee.
Mr. Ratcliffe. Based on public reports, Acting Director McCabe interviewed with President Trump for the position of Director of the FBI on or about May 18th of 2017.
Do you know if –first of all, do you know if Acting Director McCabe discussed the McCabe memos or the Comey memos or disclosed the existence of either to President Trump in that interview?
Ms. Page. I, I don’t think –I don’t know.
Mr . Ratcliffe. Did you have a conversation with Acting Director McCabe about his interview with the President? Ms. Page. I did. Mr. Ratcliffe. His interview for the position of FBI Director? Ms. Page. Yes. Mr. Ratcliffe. What generally did he relate to you about the interview that you may recall?
Ms. Page. I’m sorry, sir. I’m not going to go into the details of those conversations at this time. Mr. Ratcliffe. For what stated reason? Ms. Page. Because I have no idea what among the memos that Mr. McCabe drafted is of investigative utility or not to the special
counsel, and so because I have no knowledge of that, I can’t start
parsing some parts of the content and –versus others.
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Mr. Baker. When Mr. McCabe was just regular Deputy Director, did he ever keep any memos from conversations or interactions he had with Director Comey?
Ms. Page. He did not keep memos, but he obviously took notes, you know, during the course of his duties.
Mr. Baker. Okay.
Mr. Meadows. Let me, Lisa, may I do a followup from previously?
When we talked about the dossier’s existence came into your
knowledge in mid-September, it’s, I think, been reported, but also during testimony, that there was a number of different versions of different memos, I guess, that became aware –that the FBI became aware of. Is that correct?
Ms. Page. Not memos but of the reports that are called the dossier.
Mr. Meadows. Yeah.
Ms. Page. Yeah, I’m
Mr. Meadows. Yeah, I’m not following up on his.
Ms. Page. Okay.
Mr. Meadows. But as we now know is the dossier because it had a number of different reports there.
Ms. Page. My understanding is that, if there are –I’m going to make this up –if there are 20 reports that the FBI received from Christopher Steele, I’ve completely made that number up —
Mr. Meadows. Right.
Ms. Page. I’m just using it for example’s sake.
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If there are 28 reports that the FBI received from Christopher Steele at various times and from various individuals, people, other government employees, wherever, the FBI has received certain subsets of that 28.
So, from one person, we might have received 11; from another person, we might have received 14. I’m –again, I’m just doing this for example’s sake –but, yes, it is my understanding that the FBI has received from various sources –not confidential human sources –but from various places —
Mr. Meadows. Right.
Ms. Page. varied subsets of the, quote-unquote, “dossier.”
Mr. Meadows . So, when that happened, and we started to look at that, and obviously, you’ve got mid-September through the third week in October when a FISA application is actually issued on Carter Page, did you receive multiple sources between the mid-September, or were the multiple -sources after the original FISA application?
Ms. Page. I think after.
Mr. Meadows. Okay. So did you communicate that or was that outlined in the followup FISA applications that you might have gotten additional —
Ms. Page. I’m not sure –that’s my point –I’m not sure any were additional. Mr. Meadows . Right, but as a subset, but they were different. So, I mean –here is -•Ms. Page. No, that’s
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Mr. Meadows. So what you’re saying is they were all consistent; it just was part it —
Ms. Page. Duplicative. Right so —
Mr. Meadows. Let’s say there were 16 different items, you might have gotten 11 from this source and 18 from this, but they were all consistent is what you’re saying?
Ms. Page. That’s my recollection, yes.
Mr. Meadows. All right.
Ms. Page. So it’s not as though, if we had 28, and Joe Smith provided us with 11, all 11 were within the 28 we had. It is not as though one of them was new to us out of the original 28. That’s my -•
Mr. Meadows. Right.
Ms. Page. I guess I should hedge this, though, because I’m not looking at any of these. That’s my understanding based on what had been briefed to Director Comey or otherwise. I never looked at any of the nonofficial sources–
Mr. Meadows. Right.
Ms. Page. of the dossier.
We got the set of the reports that we got from Christopher Steele,
our confidential human source. That was sort of the authoritative set that we cared about. To the extent we got chunks or subsets from other people, we collected them, but –Mr. Meadows. At what point did you start to get concerned that there may be some potential credibility issues as it relates to who
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may have paid for the work? Did you ever?
Ms. Page. Me
Mr. Meadows. I mean, because we know that, on January 10th of 2017, they were still, according to Peter Strzok’s email to you and others, that they were unverified still at that particular point.
Ms. Page. So, let’s –let –there’s a lot -•
Mr. Meadows. January 10th.
Ms. Page. There’s a lot packed in there, though. So, to your first question, when did I get concerned?
I’m not sure that I ever actually had a concern. And the reason is that, with respect to the –certainly the first FISA –I think we had an understanding that Steele had first been engaged by a Republican opposition but by –I’m not going to be able to describe it better, and I hope I’m not —
Mr. Meadows. Somebody opposite of Trump.
Ms. Page. Exactly. By a Republican who is seeking opposition research. And then, after that person had dropped out –I didn’t know who –but after that had sort of fallen away, that the engagement continued for the Democrats.
So that was sort of a wash, as far as I’m concerned. There wasn’t, in my view, a political motive that affected the –Mr. Meadows . No, the one political narrative is that they were all against Donald Trump. That would be the consistent theme there.
Ms. Page. Right.
Mr. Meadows. Whether it was for Marco Rubio or Ted Cruz, they
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were all consistently against Donald Trump. Ms. Page. That’s right. But because of the person that Christopher Steele was and the –both his –Mr. Meadows. Because he was credible from before when you worked with him. Ms. Page. Exactly. And this was not a source of consternation, in my view.
Mr. Meadows. So let me drill down. And specifically, Mike Kortan and media contacts, potential media contacts, at what point did that become a concern as it relates to Christopher Steele and some of the communication that was not just a couple? It seemed to be widespread.
Ms. Page. Right. So we were very concerned about the existence and the content of Steele’s reporting leaking. We were very concerned about.
Mr. Meadows. In fact, did you not verify that he had leaked? mean, today, if you were to —
Ms. Page. Let me –hold on. I’m sorry. One second.
Mr. Meadows. Go ahead. Sorry.
Ms. Page. No, no. At some point, December-ish, I think, maybe –well, maybe earlier than that, maybe November. Mike Kortan, the head of our Public Affairs Office, does start to inform the team that there are more outlets asking him about this.
Do you have it?
What is it?
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Have you heard of this?
Because the existence of these reports is starting to sort of circulate in Washington circles. And I remember the team discussing, as a collective sort of saying, like, how our singular focus was to not confirm that we had them because then we knew that the press couldn’t necessarily report on the substance of the allegations because they were so inflammatory.
Mr. Meadows . Right.
Ms. Page. But if they wanted to report in a way that would be less inflammatory, they could simply say: The FBI has reports that say blahbadee, blahbadee, blah.
So our single focus was to make sure they could not do that.
And with some regularity Kortan would inform us that this news outlet or that news outlet had asked him: Do you have these? Do you know about them?
And we just had a resolute “no comment” because we did not want to allow the opportunity that we did have these to even allow that to be the news story.
So —
Mr. Meadows. So was Mike Kortan’s acknowledgment that this potentially could have been happening with Christopher Steele, was that part of the decision to not reimburse Christopher Steele, as has been reported, or pay him for part of the work as a confidential human source?
Ms. Page. I don’t know what you’re talking about. I’m sorry. Mike –so Christopher Steele was never –he came to us and gave us
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this information. We didn’t, we didn’t —
Mr. Meadows. So there was never an indication to reimburse him for his expenses or anything else. Ms. Page. No, no, we reimbursed him for his -•Mr. Meadows. Pay him for his time? Ms. Page. his travel expenses. Mr. Meadows. Pay him for his time? Ms. Page. No, not to my knowledge. Mr. Meadows. I can see my colleague from Texas getting anxious,
so I’m going to yield back.
Ms. Page. I was going to say one other thing. One of the other things you said sort of unverified, salacious. And so that’s true, and I can’t get into sort of the substance of what we did, but immediately, I mean as soon as we received the reporting from Steele in mid-September, we set about trying to prove or disprove every single factual statement in the dossier.
And so, and we had line level analysts who are super experts on Russia, try to pick apart each statement and either try to prove its veracity or prove its inaccuracy. And to the best of my knowledge, we were never able to disprove any statement in it. So we were never able to say: There’s a claim about X, and that is untrue.
There are some statements for which we have never been able to confirm or deny its veracity. But there are no statements contained in the –at least at the last time that the review is done, which is now many months ago –that we were able to demonstrate or show were
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demonstrably false. Mr. Ratcliffe. Ms. Page, are you talking about the Woods file? Ms. Page. No. The Woods file is a document that accompanies a
FISA, which provides the basis for each statement contained therein.
Mr. Ratcliffe. Right. I’ve seen it.
Ms. Page. Okay.
Mr. Ratcliffe. But I —
Ms. Page. I’m not talking about the Woods file. I’m talking about a separate effort that was undertaken in order to try to verify for investigative purposes, not for purposes of the FI5A, but a separate effort undertaken to try to validate the allegations contained within the Steele reporting.
Mr. Ratcliffe. Okay. So what would that, what was the name –maybe I missed it. What was the name of that document?
Ms. Page. There’s no name.
Mr. Ratcliffe. If I were trying to locate that or ask for it to be produced, what would I be asking for? Ms. Page. I mean, the efforts to validate the Steele reporting? I don’t know. It’s not like a document. I mean, it is not a –
Mr. Meadows. I guess what he’s saying is we have not seen these documents yet. We’ve made multiple requests. So I guess how can you help us home in on where those requests mayor may not be?
Mr. Ratcliffe. And the reason I mentioned the Woods file is because I have seen the Woods file because I’ve wanted –Ms. Page. The Woods file is different.
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Mr. Ratcliffe. And I understand that, but I thought maybe you were talking about it without naming it. So, if there’s another document out there that attempts to do something similar, it sounds like
Ms. Page. No, I don’t –it is not that similar. Every single FISA that goes to the FISC has a Woods file.
Mr. Ratcliffe. Right.
Ms. Page. No matter the topic, no matter the subject, no matter the threat.
The Woods file is part of the FISA process which is designed to demonstrate that we have done due diligence with respect to the facts supporting the FISA application. This is a sort of separate effort that investigative team undertook.
Mr. Ratcliffe. Okay. Ms. Page, I have to –I’ve had a chance to ask you questions over the last Friday and again today. I know I’ve asked you some tough questions, but I want to get on the record, have I been discourteous to you at all?
Ms. Page. No, sir.
Mr. Ratcliffe. Have I given you the full opportunity to answer or explain your answers?
Ms. Page. Yes, sir.
Mr. Ratcliffe. And have I generally been fair in my questioning?
Ms. Page. Yes.
Mr . Ratcliffe. Believe it or not, I’m asking that –believe it
or not some folks might misrepresent how we conduct ourselves in here,
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and I want to get that on the record.
So I thank you for your time.
Mr. Meadows. And I’m –the gentleman from Boston has a couple of questions for me, and you’ll tell by his accent very quickly.
Mr. Brebbia. Hi. I’m Sean Brebbia, Oversight and Government Reform, Majority. Ms. Page. Sean? Mr. Brebbia. Brebbia. B-R-E-B-B-I-A.
BY MR. BREBBIA: Q I show you an email between you and Peter Strzok from October 18, 2016. A I just want to take a second to start from the beginning and look at it.
Q Sure. Please do.
A Okay.
Q Just beginning very basically, can you tell us a little bit about what ‘ s being discussed here? The subject is A Am I allowed to –I’m sorry. One second, please. Ms. Bessee. May we confer? Mr. Brebbia. Sure. [Discussion off the record.] Ms. Page. So I don’t –I can’t –I believe that I can answer the question. I don’t believe I can answer the question in an unclassified setting. Mr. Brebbia. Okay.
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Mr. Somers. But you could answer the question in a classified setting?
Ms. Page. Yes.
Mr. Brebbia. And FBI.
BY MR. BREBBIA: Q Okay. Couple more , In this email, there’s mention of “they” editinga document. Subject of the email is “Re The document that’s being discussed, did the”, have any involvement with preparing that document? A There’s no way I can answer that. I can’t answer that it in this. I’m sorry. Q How about anyone at the White House? Anyone at the White House have involvement in drafting that document?
A I can say, generally, I am not aware of the White House ever in my personal knowledge, I’ve never been a part of any FISA in which the White House has been involved?
Q And how about knowledge? Is there at the White House –anyone in the White House have knowledge of that document?
A Not to my knowledge.
Q It probably makes more sense to take this up in classified setting? A I think so, sir. Mr. Parmiter. Could I ask just a couple of followup questions to some of the things you talked about with Mr. Ratcliffe?
You referred to a separate effort that was not the Woods file to
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validate allegations in the Steele reporting. I’m just kind of curious as to the timeframe. When did that sort of separate effort begin to corroborate the Steele reporting, and when did it end?
Ms. Page. It began immediately upon receiving the Steele reporting. And I do not know when it ended.
BY MR. BAKER: Q And what steps were taken to validate or refute any of the points made in the document?
A I can’t go into more detail about the specific efforts that were taken, other than that herculean efforts were taken to try to prove and –or disprove or corroborate in any way the statements contained in the Steele reporting.
Q Okay. Let’s take the Steele reporting out of it.
If you were trying to validate points made in information given from another source, would it be fair to say one of the techniques to validate or disprove would be to task other sources?
A
Q So would you do everything and anything that’s authorized,
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but that could include tasking other human sources to -•
A Well, yes I guess it could, but think about really what you’re saying. If I have a document that says, “On January 25th of 2013, Joe Smith and Sally Jones were at a restaurant,” _ that’s a historical event.
Q But if you have a source that owned the restaurant. I mean, you could have a source that -•A If you
And then you would get whatever answer then, certainly.
But more likely, I mean, so maybe you would
. I mean, I’m making this up, obviously, but the more expeditious and likely investigative steps would be to look at what is
Q Okay. A And that would at least make that statement more likely to be true or less likely to be true, depending on what you find. Q Okay. Thank you.
BY MR. BREITENBACH:
Q You had indicated on Friday that there was an investigator who had been brought over to the Special Counsel’s Office prior to Mr. Strzok being employed, but that that person was not a good fit?
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A That’s correct.
Q Who was that person?
A I think his name was John Brown.
Q And why do you think that the special counsel deemed him –Mr. John Brown,you said?
A I think that’s his name,yeah.
Q Why do you think the special counsel deemed him not to be a good fit?
A You would have to ask the special counsel.
Q So you’re not aware of why he might have been removed -•
A I’m not going to speculate.
Q –from the team?
A No.
Q Why did you leave the Special Counsel’s Office?
A I talked about this at length on Friday. When Mr. Mueller first asked me to join, I was quite hesitant to do so. It had been an incredibly intense 2 years, and I have very young children at home. And I wanted to be a better parent to them. And so I originally demurred, and Mr. McCabe encouraged me to go and help out. And so as a sort of compromise position, I talked with Mr. Mueller about coming over for 45 days to sort of help them stand up their effort and that we would sort of reassess at the end of those 45 days.
And, ultimately; I knew –I know what a Bob Mueller operation looks like, and I know the intensity and the rigor and the incredibly hard work that is required. And I was just ready to sort of make a
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change in my personal life. And so I left after the 45 days and returned to the FBI.
Q Okay. And also in your testimony on Friday, you had that indicated –you had made some statement indicating that we had access to all of your emails, texts, communications?
A I mean, this is my presumption. There’s not a whole lot of secrets out there left on me. Q Are you aware whether there was any preservation order ever issued with respect to any of your communications?
A Preservation by whom and for what?
Q That’s what I’m asking. Maybe from Special Counsel’s Office, the FBI, by -•
A I mean the FBI, to the best of my knowledge, preserves everything. And I’m certain there have been preservation orders that the FBI has sort of announced, but I’m not even there anymore. So I don’t have access to any of the stuff before you in the first place.
Q We understand you communicated through other devices, other accounts, including iMessage and Gmail. Has there been any effort to access any of those communications?
A Well, I don’t have any iMessages. We communicated using our
personal devices for personal purposes. We very infrequently used
those devices for work purposes. And
Q I’m sorry. I missed that.
A We very infrequently used our personal devices for work
purposes.

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Q Have you turned over those messages that were work-related?
A There are no work-related messages in my personal accounts.
Q But you indicated you “infrequently,” meaning, at some point, you did communicate regarding work-related purposes over personal devices?
A I am sure that I have. I never retained those. And unless they were a record requiring, you know, sending it back through the FBI system, there’s no need to retain those.
Q And neither the FBI nor the special counsel has ever attempted or requested your communications over personal devices or personal accounts?
A One moment, please.

[Discussion off the record.]
Ms. Page. So there is –my understanding is that there is some FOIA litigation, either at the Department or the FBI for which my personal accounts –I’m sorry –for which work-related material on my personal accounts have been requested to be preserved, but I do not have any such material to preserve.
BY MR. BREITENBACH:
Q You indicated previously that the importance that you placed on the Russia investigation over the Clinton email investigation in terms of the effect you believed it might have on national security.
Are you aware whether there was ever any similar targeting of the Hillary Clinton campaign by any foreign intelligence service? A No, not that I’m aware. And just to be clear about your
question, that answer was given with respect to, once we were in October and we had the sort of ongoing Russia investigation and we had the potential additional emails that may have existed on the Weiner laptop.
So I just want to make sure we’re talking about –it’s not as though, other than in that one particular month, the two investigations never overlapped such that we had to do a weighing or balancing of the two investigations.
Q Serving as counsel to Mr. McCabe, the number two at the FBI, is that the kind of information that you might learn of with respect to whether another.
A If there had been a serious attempt by a foreign power to –by a threatening foreign power to work with members of the Clinton campaign, I would have expected to know about it, yes.
Q Okay. Thank you.
BY MR. SOMERS:
Q You mentioned the name John Brown a few minutes ago. Can you just clarify where he is, what his job is? A I have no idea what his job is right now. Q No. Was at the time. Sorry. A So, when the special counsel first stood up and they were
looking to staff that effort, they –the FBI, I think, originally wanted to put somebody other than Pete on it so that Pete could kind of go back to his day job, as I think I described in some depth on Friday.
And so the person that they originally sought to fill the kind of lead FBI role on the special counsel was an individual named John
Brown. Q National Security Division? Counterintelligence? A I think a Cyber SAC. Mr. Somers. I think we’re out of time for this round.
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[4:07 p.m.] Ms. Kim. We’re back on the record. It is 4:87.
BY MS. KIM.
Q Ms. Page.the email that you discussed with the majority about the has been used as an exhibit for a news article that came out on July 6th, 2018, from The Hill entitled “Memos Detail FBI’s Hurry the F Up to Probe Trump Campaign. ” Are you familiar with that article?
A I’m sorry, can you step just a little bit further from the mike? It’s a little bit –yeah.
Q Does this help?
A Yeah. Sorry. So say that allover again,please.
Q Yes. The email that you reviewed with the

majority was used in an article from The Hill by opinion contributor John Solomon about how the FBI allegedly kept hurry the F up pressure on the Trump campaign probe. Are you familiar with that article?
A I am familiar with that article, yes.
Q The thesis question from that article, third paragraph of that article I’ll read to you is: The question that lingers unanswered iSJ did those sentiments, meaning anti-Trump sentiments, affect official actions?
A Right.
Q So, insofar as you can tell us in an unclassified setting,did the process reflect any political biases or other improper motives?
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A No. As I –as I think I discussed earlier –I probably shouldn’t have discussed earlier in that setting. Okay, never mind. No, there were no –no political interest or bias which affected the Carter Page FISA. Q Did it reflect any undue haste on the part of the FBI in an attempt to try to stop Donald Trump from becoming elected President?
A No, not at all.
BY MS. HARIHARAN:
Q Also a part of the article is they cite Peter Strzok’s testimony from when he met with us in the transcribed interview where he said, quote, in response to Mr. Gowdy’s question of whether he was involved in the preparation of the affidavit in support of that FISA, he said, quote: “I can tell you that I was aware of the FISA application, but I did not participate in its preparation.”
And then, when asked again, he wrote –excuse me, he said: did not provide information. I did speak with people who were preparing it.
So, referring back to the emails that the majority showed you, was that Peter Strzok acting in his capacity as a supervisor for those responsible for the FISA application?
A That’s correct. So speaking more generally, a person in a DAD role does not have any role in the FISA process. It’s a very sort of regimented process that goes back and forth from the Department to the FBI. At no time does a DAD need to approve it or read it or write it or provide intelligence toward it.
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To the extent Pete was involved, it was because he was –to the extent Pete was knowledgeable that it was happening, it’s because he was in charge of the Crossfire investigation. But he –that’s consistent with my understanding and recollection. He did not have a role in the drafting or the sort of approval of the FISA.
Q So just to be clear, he was not one of the individuals involved in sort of the preparation of the factual -•
A That’s correct.
Q Okay. And then, to the best of your knowledge, then was his testimony accurate?
A That’s correct, yes.
Q Thank you.
Mr. Cohen. Ms. Page, I’m sorry, I’ve missed your testimony on Friday and this morning, so there might be things that are repetitious. I believe I’m correct that you’ve said that even if people had political perspectives, and some people were anti-Hillary and some people thought Bernie was beyond the burn, et cetera, that none of those biases affected any of the actions of Mr. Strzok or of you or anybody else within the Mueller special counsel investigation.
Ms. Page. That’s correct, sir.
Mr. Cohen. Anything in the FISA applications that you
know of that was not dealt with according to procedures and -•
Ms. Page. No, sir.
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Mr. Cohen. No nefarious activity? Ms. Page. No, sir.
Mr. Cohen. And wasn’t there some information that if you went too far in giving the court –the court was given information, I believe, about the fact that somebody might have paid for the dossier, but that if they went too far, they might be outing sources or going beyond what is legitimate activity?
Ms. Page. Sir, I’m not sure I can answer that question in this setting.
Mr. Cohen. And I’m not sure if I asked it right.
Ms. Page. No, I understand your question. I’m just not sure –I’m really not sure what’s been classified and –what remains classified and what’s been declassified. So I’m not –I’m not comfortable answering that in this setting.
Mr. Cohen. And then you were asked about Mr. McCabe’s memos and Mr. Comey’ s and the fact that he made some notes about his conversations with President Trump, and to the best of your knowledge he didn’t do this with any other Presidents. Is that correct?
Ms. Page. I think that’s been his testimony, yes, sir.
Mr. Cohen. Do you think in your history as an attorney, your knowledge as a human being, that the degree of the –the reputation a person has for truth and veracity might have something to do with the likelihood of somebody making a memo about their conversation with them?
Ms. Page. I agree with you, sir.
Mr. Cohen. So he wouldn’t –if he had talked to Abraham Lincoln,
he wouldn’t have had to make a memo, honest Abe.
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How long were you involved with the FBI?
Ms. Page. I was –I worked at the FBI for about 6 years.
Mr. Cohen. And this was –how many years were you there during Comey’s directorship?
Ms. Page. For all of his directorship. So for the 3-1/2 years that Director Comey was there, I was also an employee. Mr. Cohen. And were you there after he was fired too? Ms. Page. I was. Mr. Cohen. Would you say the morale at the FBI went up or down after he left?
Ms. Page. We were devastated by his firing, sir.
Mr. Cohen. He was generally respected by members of the FBI?
Ms. Page. He was respected and well-liked, and people believed in his vision for the FBI. Mr. Cohen. You were never there during the time Mueller was there, were you? Ms. Page. I was for about the first year, year and a half of Mr. Mueller’s tenure.
Mr. Cohen. Do you know what his reputation is among members of the Bureau for honesty and for diligence and for, you know, hard work and caring about America?
Ms. Page. He –his reputation for all of those things is strong. He is regarded as very demanding, but also completely honest, you know, with integrity that is really unparalleled.
Mr. Cohen. And a lot of the work that Peter Strzok had done at
[174] the FBI, particularly back in 2010, when he outed I think it was as many as 10 Russian spies, was a lot of his work centered in counterintelligence on Russia?
Ms. Page. His entire career has been in the Counterintelligence Division. So his full 20 years at the FBI has been almost exclusively doing either counterintelligence or espionage cases, right. So counterintelligence is our effort to counter foreign adversaries here collecting against us. Espionage cases involve U.S persons who have decided to turn
Mr. Cohen. Join another team.
Ms. Page. –and work for a foreign power.
Mr. Cohen. Yeah. Maybe go and sit next to Putin and say nice things to him, that kind of stuff.
Would you say that if he had a driving force in his life and something that he was most concerned about that it was protecting America and our country from Russian influence?
Ms. Page. That is –he is a patriot, first and foremost, and he has devoted his entire life to defending the national security of the United States. And Russia poses probably the most pernicious threat to Western ideals and Western democracy. So, yes.
Mr. Cohen. I don’t think I have anything else. Thank you. And I’m not going to offer you –suggest you should get a Purple Heart even though I’ll probably be described as sexist for not doing it.
Mr. Cummings. Thank you very much.
Ms. Page, I thank you for being here. And I know it’s not the
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most pleasant moment in your life. During his testimony the other day, Agent Strzok said something to this effect: That while he may have had his own personal opinions about Hillary Clinton and even his own opinions about Donald Trump, that it did not impact his –the investigation. In other words, when he was deliberating with his colleagues, it did not affect that.
Do you believe that?
Ms. Page. Yes, sir.
Mr. Cummings. And why do you say that?
Ms. Page. Because I was present for all of the investigative steps and for the decisionmaking that occurred on both investigations. And so I know the discussions that went on around them. I know the reasons behind the steps that we took.
Certainly, with respect to the Clinton investigation, there was not a single investigative step at all, under any circumstances, other than the July 5th statement made by the Director, that wasn’t done either in conjunction with or at the direction of the Justice Department.
So there is no room for bias, to the extent it even exists in the first place, to have influenced official acts, because every single act was taken in coordination with a half dozen to a dozen or more people.
Mr. Cummings. Can you understand –and I asked the same question of Mr. Strzok, Agent Strzok. And I practiced law many years. But can you understand why people might think when they read the texts
[176] that it would be almost impossible not to interject that, those thoughts, into the discussion?
Ms. Page. I do understand that, sir. But I do think that we do not give up our right to have a view as to who is most qualified to be President of the United States simply because we work for the FBI or even because we are working on an investigation involving one or the other of them.
And these were our personal views. They were views, particularly before July 28th, which entirely reflected our view of the dignity befitting the White House, of the decorum and the way one holds one’s self. I don’t see how that is relevant at all to whether Hillary Clinton mishandled classified information 3 years prior.
And after July 28th, we were now concerned about whether there was a foreign adversary trying to work with a Presidential campaign. And so I think that the concern there is both understandable and recognizable.
I guess the other thing I would say, sir, is that –and I’ve said this a number of times in response to other questions –we don’t often like the people we investigate. And that is true whether we are investigating a pedophile or a fraudster or a terrorist or a drug dealer. We don’t like criminals. We don’t like people who we think are criminals.
And that does not ever under any circumstances pervade the activity that an FBI agent or an FBI lawyer or a DOJ prosecutor engage in. We are not driven by political motivations. We are driven by a
[177] search for the truth. This is who we are as FBI employees. It is absolutely what pervades our every decisionmaking.
And if at any opportunity we saw somebody acting in a different way, we would not tolerate it. It’s just not the way we operate.
Mr. Cummings. You said something a moment ago in I think it was answering one of Congressman Cohen’s questions, and I don’t remember the exact words. I tried to jot it down. But you were talking about Russia and the threat of Russia. I forget the words you used. You said Russia was the greatest –can you elaborate on that, please?
Ms. Page. So it is my personal view that Russia poses probably the most –the greatest threat certainly to Western ideals of any of our foreign adversaries. And we have vast foreign adversaries. But even the threats that are posed by China or by Iran or North Korea or others doesn’t speak to sort of the core of Western democracy, right?
You have –you have –in the Russian Federation and in President Putin himself, you have an individual whose aim is to disrupt the Western alliance and whose aim is to make Western democracy more fractious and in order to weaken our ability, America’s ability and the West’s ability, to spread our democratic ideals. I mean, that’s the goal, is to make us less of a moral authority to spread democratic values.
And I happen to think that this is the best country on the planet and that our values are universal values that can and should be spread across the globe. And that is not a view that is shared by Russia.
And so every effort to sow discord, to make us fractious, to harm
[178] the Western and American way of life is a win for the Russian Federation. It is a win for President Putin.
So it is my opinion –I am certainly not the world expert on it –but it is my opinion that with respect to Western ideals and who it is and what it is we stand for as Americans, Russia poses the most dangerous threat to that way of life.
Mr. Cummings. Are you aware of any FBI investigations motivated by political bias?
Ms. Page. Never, sir. No.
Mr. Cummings. You never saw signs of that when you were there?
Ms. Page. No.
Mr. Cummings. Are you aware of any Justice Department investigations motivated by political bias?
Ms. Page. Not that I’m aware of, no.
Ms. Page. On February 2nd, 2018, President Trump tweeted, and I quote: “The top leadership and investigators of the FBI and the Justice Department have politicized the sacred investigative process in favor of Democrats against Republicans, something which would have been unthinkable just a short time ago. Rank and file are great people,” end of quote.
Do you agree that, quote, “the top leadership and investigators of the FBI and the Justice Department have politicized the sacred investigative process in favor of Democrats and against Republicans,” and can you explain why you feel whatever you feel?
Ms. Page. No, sir, that’s not been my experience. My experience
[179] is as I’ve described it, which is that every person to a person, there are 36,500 of us, and we all care about doing things the right way.
That is the reason that we have the authority that we have as the FBI to show up at your door in the middle of the night and to knock on it and to hope that you open. And the reason that we are able to do that is because we have a reputation for honesty and integrity.
And if we cannot continue to do that, if people question our motives and people question why we are showing up at their door in the middle of the night, we are all unquestionably less safe because of it.
Mr. Cummings. Tell me, why did you become an FBI agent?
Ms. Page. So I’ve been a lawyer, sir, for the last 12 years. I am one of those nerdy kids who at 14 knew I wanted to be a lawyer, knew I wanted to serve –be a public servant. I went to a public school for law school in order to have less debt and lived at home so that I could not sort of take the route of a private sector job, because I have always wanted to serve my country.
Mr. Cummings. I take it this has been a very painful experience.
Ms. Page. It has, sir.
Mr. Cummings. Do you want me to pause for a minute?
Ms. Page. I’m fine.
Mr. Cummings. Throughout your career at the FBI and DOJ, are you aware of any instances of the FBI and the Justice Department conducting investigations in favor of any party and against another?
Ms. Page. No, sir.
[180] Mr. Cummings. On May 22nd, 2018, Republican Members of Congress introduced House Resolution 907. In that, they were requesting that the Attorney General appoint a second special counsel to investigate misconduct at DOJ and the FBI.
At the bottom of the first page, the resolution asserts the following: “Whereas, there is an urgent need for the appointment of a second special counsel in light of evidence that raises critical concerns about decisions, activities, and inherent bias displayed at the highest levels of the Department of Justice and the Federal Bureau of Investigation regarding FISA abuse, how and why the Hillary Clinton email probe ended, and how and why the Donald Trump-Russia probe began, ” end of quote.
Ms. Page, do you think that there was inherent bias at the highest levels of DOJ and FBI regarding FISA abuse?
Ms. Page. No, sir, there has not been.
Mr. Cummings. Is there any evidence of inherent bias displayed at the highest levels of DOJ and the FBI regarding how and why the Hillary Clinton email probe ended?
Ms. Page. No, sir.
Mr. Cummings. Is there any evidence of inherent bias displayed at the highest levels of the DOJ and the FBI against Donald Trump as part of the Trump-Russia probe?
Ms. Page. Sir, no. The actions that we took in that investigation, at least in the time that I’ve been present for it, are exactly what you want the FBI to do when confronted with the risk that
[181] a member of a Presidential campaign may be working in coordination with the Russians.
There is no –at the outset of an investigation, we cannot tell you definitively what is happening.
But the notion that we should not have opened the investigation, that we should not have looked into whether or not this is a truthful or accurate allegation is just mind-boggling to me. It is precisely what you want your FBI to do, investigate counterintelligence threats to this Nation.
It doesn’t mean that anybody has done anything wrong, not at the outset. It means that we need to look. And that’s what we did.
Mr. Cummings. Are you aware of any actions ever taken to damage the Trump campaign at the highest levels of the Department of Justice or the FBI?
Ms. Page. No, sir.
Mr. Cummings. Are you aware of any actions ever taken to personally target Donald Trump at the highest levels of the Department of Justice or the FBI?
Ms. Page. No.
Mr. Cummings. Is there any evidence that any FBI or Department of Justice official took any actions biased in favor of Clinton or biased against Trump?
Ms. Page. No, sir.
Mr. Cummings. Not James Comey?
Ms. Page. No.
[182] Mr. Cummings. Andrew McCabe?
Ms. Page. No.
Mr. Cummings. Peter Strzok?
Ms. Page. No.
Mr. Cummings. Loretta Lynch?
Ms. Page. Not that I’m aware of.
Mr. Cummings. Sally Yates?
Ms. Page. Again, same answer.
Mr. Cummings. I’m sorry?
Ms. Page. Same answer.
Mr. Cummings. Rod Rosenstein?
Ms. Page. No.
Mr. Cummings. And Robert Mueller?
Ms. Page. No, sir.
Mr. Cummings. Is there any evidence that President Obama ordered any investigative activity that was biased in favor of Clinton or biased against Trump?
Ms. Page. No, sir.
Mr. Cummings. Is there any evidence that President Obama ordered a wiretap of Donald Trump or the Trump campaign?
Ms. Page. There is no evidence of that at all, sir.
Mr. Cummings. None?
Ms. Page. None.
Mr. Cummings. I take it there was some time spent trying to figure out whether there was truth to that.
[183] Ms. Page. At the Department, certainly, yes, sir.
Mr. Cummings. On December 3rd, 2017, the President tweeted, quote: “After years of Comey with the phony and dishonest Clinton investigation and more running the FBI, its reputation is in tatters, worst in history, but fear not, we will bring it back to greatness,” end of quote.
Let me ask you something. I want to go back to something that Congressman Cohen asked you. He asked you about a certain period where –and he was asking you about the morale. And you said –and I’m not –I don’t remember the exact words. But can you describe, you know, when you –I’m sure you all saw these tweets. And when you get things like that, read stuff like that, how do you think it affected the morale?
Ms. Page. I will just say, sir, that that is not consistent with my feeling about Director Comey or anybody that I know or that I’ve spoken to about how we held Director Comey. He was widely liked. He was respected. I don’t know whether he would want to work with me ever again, but I would work for him anywhere he went any time in my life. He is a man of extraordinary intelligence and integrity, and it was a total pleasure to learn from him.
Mr. Cummings. Do you agree with the President’s statement that the FBI’s reputation is in tatters and is the worst –is the worst in history?
Ms. Page. Well, it is now.
Mr. Cummings. And why do you say that?
[184] Ms. Page. Because we continue to be a political punching bag. Because some private texts about our personal opinions continue to be used to –as a broad brush to describe the entire activity of 36,500 individuals. Because we have been caught up in a place that we never could have possibly imagined, because all of us did the job that was asked of us.
Mr. Cummings. Is that painful?
Ms. Page. It’s horrendous, sir.
Mr. Cummings. Does it make your job harder to do?
Ms. Page. Yes, it does.
Mr. Cummings. How so?
Ms. Page. Well, it’s the very point that I was making. If we cannot be trusted to call on you, if we cannot be trusted to protect confidential human sources, then we need to get out of the law enforcement business. Because if we cannot be trusted to keep secrets, if we cannot be trusted to –to believe that what we do we do for the right reasons, then we have a very big problem in this country.
Mr. Cummings. Do you agree with the President’s characterization that the Clinton investigation was, quote, “phony and dishonest”?
Ms. Page. I would welcome the President to point out what we should have done differently in that investigation, what the evidence would have shown, how we would have prosecuted beyond a reasonable doubt, given the evidence before us. I would welcome a conversation with President Trump about that.
[185]
I am really tired of hearing all of the things that we should have done with nobody actually demonstrating to me why that would have resulted in a different conclusion with respect to the prosecution of Mrs. Clinton.
Mr. Cummings. In your opinion, what kind of impact do statements like this have on the morale —
Ms. Page. They’re demoralizing.
Mr. Cummings. –of the rank and file?
Ms. Page. They’re demoralizing, sir.
Mr. Cummings. And what is the impact of statements like these on the public’s confidence in the FBI and how does that impact our national security? Ms. Page. I’m not sure I can expand on that further than I already have, sir.
Mr. Cummings. Let me say this. I don’t have anything else, but again, I think I just want to defend the truth. And –were you about to say something?
Ms. Page. I was going to say, so do I, sir. Mr. Cummings. And I believe that. I believe that. And I think what I’ve been trying to get to is the bottom line.
You know, when I listen to some of the questioning, I try to figure out where are we going with all of this. And it seems to me when you told me and this body, this group of people, about your feelings with regard to Russia, it makes it even more urgent that we get to the bottom line or we won’t have a democracy.
[186] And I want to thank you for your service. Going through difficult times is difficult, but in the end I think if you survive it you come out a stronger person.
Ms. Page. Let’s hope so.
Mr. Cummings. And I want to –I do thank you for your service and thank you for your testimony.
Ms. Page. Thank you.
Mr. Cummings. All right.
[Recess.]
Mr. Parmiter. Let’s go back on the record. It’s 4:43 p.m.
BY MR. PARMITER:
Q Ms. Page, I appreciate you bearing with us. It’s been a long day. We just have a couple more questions to ask. A No problem.
Q Are you aware whether during the investigation, the MYE investigation, there was any evidence that Secretary Clinton or someone on her behalf had transmitted classified material other than by email?
A How do you mean?
Q For example
A Like a text or something or -•
Q –by fax.
A Oh.•
Q Or, you know, either Ms. Clinton herself or someone on her behalf.
A I don’t know. I’m sorry.
[187]Q So you wouldn’t know whether or not she directed someone to do so?
A None of this is ringing a bell. I’m not saying that someone wouldn’t have that information. I just –none of this sounds familiar to me.
Q Okay. Are you generally familiar with something called the President’s Daily Brief?
A I am.
Q And is that document generally classified?
A It is.
Q At what level is it classified?
A It depends on the reporting contained therein, but it is certainly a highly restricted document that, broadly speaking, is classified at the T5 level.
Q And would be inappropriate to transmit via fax or unclassified email or to anybody who is not otherwise authorized to view it, correct?
A It could –it could go over secure fax. It would depend on what system you were talking about. But in general, yes.
Q Okay. Let me ask you a couple of followup questions also about meetings that were held at the Bureau regarding the Midyear Exam after the case had wrapped.
Did you attend any meetings at the FBI in 2018 regarding the Midyear Exam investigation?
A In all of 2018? Oh, yeah, all the time. Yes. Oh, 2018?
Oh, I’m sorry. I’m sorry. No, I don’t think so. No.
Q When did you leave the Bureau? Do you recall the date?
A May 4th of this year.
Q So I’m not going to –I’m just going to show you an email that has been produced by the Bureau.
A Oh, oh, oh, oh. I’m sorry. Yes. So this I can explain. Sorry. Oh, no, what is this? So –sorry.
When you talked about meetings at –at FBI, I’m thinking about meetings with the Director about the investigation. I sort of managed or sort of ran point, coordinated, I don’t know what the right word is, an effort to try to stay on top, however unsuccessfully, of all of the various –oh, wait. I am gone at this point. Sorry. That’s weird.
Q Right. So this email, just for the record, is a May 17th, 2018, email to a number of folks at the Bureau, including, well, you, even though you had left by this time, correct?
A Right. So my guess is that somebody just cancelled the –let me take a step back.
For some period of time, although I was not involved in this after probably May of 2017, for some period of time starting in maybe the winter of 2016 through probably May of 2017, I tried to assist with the coordination within the Office of Congressional Affairs to sort of stay on top of the myriad requests coming from all the different committees for documents and for letters and sort of the congressional response and all of that.
And so I wasn’t in charge of any of it. I just tried to convene a meeting weekly so as to try to not let disparate –the disparate people who were responsible for, well, this person’s responsible for this portfolio and this one has HPSCI and this one has HOGR and this one, right, so that we were all talking with one voice, we all knew what requests had come in, the responses were consistent, right, we were producing the right stuff to the right committees.
So for a period of time, like I said, probably from Decemberish 2016 through May 2017, I sort of led that effort. That’s what this is a –I think there was a sort of standing Midyear meeting that was once a week.
I don’t know whether this is –whether this reflects that, to be honest with you. I just don’t know. It seems like it. It’s the right personnel who would have been involved in that.
But by the date of this email, which is May 17th, 2018, I was not an FBI employee.
Q Okay. Well, would you say that this is canceling a meeting
series?
A That’s what it might be, yeah. So-•
Q And to your knowledge
A And maybe it happened automatically. Like when they disabled my account, right, after leaving, it’s possible that –yeah, but this would have –exactly. So the message contained here could have been whatever the last time I sent a cancellation. You know, sometimes Outlook saves that last message, because obviously there’s no way for me to have typed this when I’m no longer an employee.
Q Correct. So –but, as far as you recall, had any meetings of this MYE followup team taken place in 2018?
A No, not to my knowledge. The effort has now been –after I left for special counsel, I never picked it back up. And so, to the best of my knowledge, it was people in OCA who have been responsible for convening meetings for congressional response, to the extent ones are happening. I just don’t know. I don’t have knowledge of it anymore.
Q Okay. And that would have been when you left for special counsel in May of 2017?
A Correct. Correct. I never took –my point is when I came back from special counsel, I never took it back up. Mr. Somers. Since we’re at the close of the interview, just to completely switch subjects possibly.
Mr. Meadows. Before you close out, Lisa, you have mentioned that you worked for Andy McCabe. You were probably the closest individual, professionally speaking, that he interacted with. Is that correct?
Ms. Page. Certainly –maybe one or two people might be equally close. But yes, I would say we were quite close professionally.
Mr. Meadows. So one of the things that I guess that I’m trying to put my arms around is, you know, as you hear different things communicated by different people, and we’ve had the opportunity to interview Mr. McCabe previously, but it appears that he, you know, lied to the FBI, lied to the IG, was caught in that, admitted it, and then kind of walked it back as it related to, you know, just some of the story of sharing with The Wall Street Journal, some of the conversation with Matt Axelrod.
How do you –I mean, would you characterize that as something that you saw typically over your professional career?
Ms. Page. I am constrained in what I can answer in light of other ongoing investigations, but I can say that I have never seen Andy lie, ever, under any circumstances. I have never seen Andy do anything other than make the right decision and often the hard decision, even when it has been personally unpopular or professionally unpopular.
I have consistently seen him make hard decisions because they were the right thing to do. I have consistently seen him be the fly in the ointment in the NSC under President Obama or in this administration because it was the right thing to do.
The findings of the inspector general are entirely inconsistent with the man I know and have worked very closely with for the last 4 years of my career. And I cannot –I simply don’t agree with those conclusions, sir.
Mr. Meadows. So –and I thought that that’s where you would go. And I guess my question is as it relates to some of the factual things that have now at least come out and been reported. So do you see this as more of and at odds with Director Comey and Andy McCabe? I mean, where is the conflict? Because, I mean, both of them can’t
be telling the truth. And obviously memos that you were talking about earlier tangentially may or may not relate. Ms. Page. So I really –I really can’t answer substantively, because it’s the subject of other ongoing activity. Mr. Meadows. So would it be fair to characterize that you believe someone else is not telling the truth?
Ms. Page. No. I actually –I am –you’ll be surprised to know that I develop strong feelings about things. And I am actually quite confident, although I’ve spoken to neither Mr. McCabe nor Mr. Comey about this, I have a strong feeling that I understand where the disconnect happened with respect to what Director Comey thought they were talking about and with respect to what Mr. McCabe was talking about.
Mr. Meadows. So you think it may be just a big misunderstanding?
Ms. Page. I do, sir. I do.
Mr. Meadows. It’s a pretty big one and you might –and so I guess where does –you know, I mentioned earlier Mike Kortan. Where does he come into all this? Because all of a sudden —
Ms. Page. Yeah.
Mr. Meadows. And what is troubling with me is knowing that there are a number of unauthorized disclosures that happened —
Ms. Page. I disagree.
Mr. Meadows. Hold on. That happened in Congress and happens at times in other agencies. Knowing that, as we’ve been involved in this, that the FBI or specifically DOJ has done a very good job of putting a narrative out
there that sometimes is not based on truth, I guess the question I have is, what role did Mike Kortan, Director Comey, Andy McCabe play in the matter that we have where we have to question a high-ranking FBI official that has now retired?
Ms. Page. Yes. I really want to answer that question, because it is as good one. Give me a moment, please.
[Discussion off the record.]
Ms. Page. Mr. Meadows, I agree with you that it is curious that there is no reference in the IG report at all to Mr. Kortan, particularly in light of what I reported, which is that both interactions with the reporter were done with Mr. Kortan, in coordination with Mr. Kortan and with Mr. Kortan at my side. So I cannot explain why there is no –there is no reference to Mr. Kortan in any testimony, if he did give any, in the IG report.
Mr. Meadows. So would it be prudent for this committee to have Mr. Kortan come and testify to perhaps add some clarity in terms of what he said, didn’t say?
Ms. Page. I think that the U.S. Attorney’s Office is probably adequately equipped to answer that question sufficiently, sir.
Mr. Meadows. All right.
Ms. Page. Particularly, honestly, it’s so tangential to -•
Mr. Meadows. The core issue.
Ms. Page. Right.
Mr. Meadows. Okay. So there seemed to be great consternation –and that’s me characterizing –the decision to recuse himself, Mr. McCabe’s decision to recuse himself in the final days of, I guess, when we reopened the MYE. It was apparent that he did not necessarily agree with that decision to recuse. Would you agree with that?
Ms. Page. I would agree with that, and I agreed with him. I did not think there was a basis to recuse.
Mr. Meadows. So was it that he was encouraged to recuse because of the appearance? Or why do you think he was encouraged to recuse himself? I mean, I’ve read a lot of back-and-forth as it relates to that, and it’s still an unanswered question for me.
Ms. Page. I know the IG report has an entire chapter on this. I haven’t read it. That was ultimately what Director Comey asked him to do, and so —
Mr. Meadows. But I guess did Director Comey ever tell him or you why he asked him to recuse himself?
Ms. Page. I have never spoken to Director Comey about it. He did –Director Comey did speak to Mr. McCabe about it, obviously, because he instructed him ultimately to –or asked that he ultimately –Oirector Comey asked that Andy ultimately recuse. And I believe it’s based on a sort of appearance, but I just –I simply think that was misguided and ill-timed.
Mr. Meadows. So the reason why I ask is because you have –now you have an Andy McCabe that recused himself, you have an Andy McCabe that’s been accused of lying several times to different people within the Department. And what you’re saying, that those are two unrelated events?
Ms. Page. Oh, wholly, yes.
Mr. Meadows. And so one is perception; the other is perhaps more a direct action of Mr. McCabe?
Ms. Page. I guess so, yeah.
Mr. Meadows. All right. Yield back.
And for the record, I want to thank you for being cooperative. I want to thank you for doing the very best to answer as many questions as possible. And I think I speak on behalf of the entire committee, that your willingness to share transparently has served you well and has certainly served this country well.
Ms. Page. Thank you, sir.
BY MR. BAKER:
Q Did you say Mr. Kortan was present at your side when you were having discussions with The Wall Street Journal?
A Correct.
Q And Mr. Kortan’s position at the FBI was what?
A He was the head of our Public Affairs.
Q He’s an assistant director of the Public Affairs Office?
A Correct.
Q So did you, by the fact he was present, believe that this was an authorized and approved -•
A It was an authorized. This is why –we didn’t get to it, but it was 100 percent an authorized disclosure. I mean, the whole premise behind the IG report in the first place I take issue with, because I was authorized by Deputy Director McCabe and by Mike Kortan to engage with the reporter on this topic.
And so, you know, the IG has come up with a different conclusion with respect to McCabe’s inherent authority to authorize it in the first place, but I simply disagree with that.
Q So you believed it was authorized?
A Yes. It was authorized, as far as I’m concerned.
Q You indicated in a previous round when there was a discussion
about McCabe memos that Deputy Director McCabe had made some memos of his own. I had asked whether he had ever made any memos regarding his conversations or interactions with Director Comey, and you said, well, he took notes.
I was referring to any kind of documentation he made for proof or clarity later on as to what he was told, not just taskings.
A Got it. No, I am not aware of him ever having taken a memo as you have just described it with respect to his engagement with Director Comey. I just wanted to clarify that like every single day he likely was taking notes with respect to his interactions with Director Comey in the course of his official duties.
Q And did you have conversations with Mr. McCabe that made you believe that he thought Director Comey instructed him or wanted him to have these conversations with The Wall Street Journal, even though there weren’t memos to that effect or notes to that effect?
A I’m sorry, ask me that question one more time.
Q Did you ever have a conversation with Mr. McCabe about the whole Wall Street Journal issue regarding whether the Director knew about it?
A Oh, no, we did not have any conversations about that. But the Director need not have known about it. The deputy had his own inherent authority to engage with the media.
So it’s not something –my point is, it’s not something he necessarily would have needed to seek the Director’s authority or approval for.
Q Okay. Is Mr. Kortan still employed with the FBI?
A No, he’s not.
Q And do you know why he left?
A Because he was long eligible to retire.
Q So he just retired?
A Yes.
Q Okay. One final question on an unrelated topic. You had indicated your role as an assistant to Mr. McCabe was to go to different meetings and sort of bridge back what had happened in these meetings or something like that.
A Yeah.
Q Are you aware of any meetings or did you hear discussion about the sophistication level of Secretary Clinton as it related to handling of classified information or emails and communications in general, that she either was or was not sophisticated, and that would have been part of the discussion regarding charging?
A I –I’m not sure if I can tie it to your last statement.
[198] It’s possible. But I was a part of –I was a part of the sort of general briefings that the Director or the Deputy Director had as we gathered more evidence in the Clinton investigation.
And I don’t remember whether it came out of Secretary Clinton’s interview or interviews with some of her senior staff or both.
But yes, we did come to learn that Secretary Clinton was not particularly sophisticated when it came to technology and the use of computers. I mean, she was not a sophisticated cyber user.
Q Was there ever any evidence or any dissent in opposition to that view?
A Oh, not to my knowledge, no.
Q You had mentioned earlier that Mr. Priestap -•
Mr. Somers. Can I ask one question?
Mr. Baker. Sure.
BY MR. SOMERS:
Q What about her sophistication in terms of knowledge of classification and what classified documents looked like? A She had that knowledge. Yeah. I don’t -•
Q Well, because in her –the 302 of her interview, for instance, she says that she did not –wasn’t aware of what the C in parentheses at the beginning of a paragraph meant.
A Yeah. I mean, that’s not –that doesn’t shock me. I mean, without the –without the rest of the sort of header and footer and cover page. Should she have? Yeah, probably. But like on a single line randomly in the middle of an email. I don’t find that terribly offensive to my sensibilities, but -•
Q I’m just bringing that out as an example of whether –what you saw as her level of understanding of markings on documents and things.
A No, I think she –I have no personal knowledge of this, but given her history in government and her position, I would expect her to have had, you know, some sophistication with respect to classification.
Mr. Parmiter. On what did you base the conclusion that she was not particularly technologically sophisticated?
Ms. Page. I think both based on her statements about her understanding on how a server works and my understanding –and I never read her 302, but my understanding is –at least I don’t think I did –is based on what was briefed to the deputy and the Director, was like as technical questions were asked of her, she lacked the ability to answer them, as well as other people who were interviewed sort of had consistent statements with respect to her technical sophistication.
BY MR. BAKER:
Q Are defensive briefings just for Members of Congress, or would Cabinet secretaries also get them if they were potentially targeted?
A Oh, certainly. I mean, any –a defensive briefing would go to any person in a position to have sensitive national secrets and/or interactions or exposure with people from foreign countries.
Q Do you know if Secretary Clinton had any in her role as Secretary of State?
A Defensive briefings?
Q Yes.
A I have no idea, sir.
Q Is it likely that she could have?
A Entirely plausible, sir. But it would again, like there’s a difference between a general CI brief, which is you’re traveling to this country, beware of these things, versus, you know, we understand that Joe Smith has reached out to you to schedule a meeting, you should be aware that intelligence suggests that Joe Smith is blah, blah, blah.
Q So-•
A That’s –the latter is a defensive briefing.
Q Sure. In addition to the specifics of who might be trying to do something to you as the Congressperson or the Cabinet member, is there a boilerplate that would almost go with any defensive briefing as to the how a hostile actor might try to exploit your position, exploit a meeting?
A I would expect so, but I don’t have personal knowledge of it.
Q Would you guess if there was that part of that would be that email communications and communications in general and weaknesses in networks would be an area for exploitation?
A I’m not really sure. You know, that might go to a broader CI briefing, a broader counterintelligence briefing, a warning about spear phishing, a warning about, you know, how cyber networks might be compromised.
But in a defensive briefing, to the best of my knowledge, in a defensive briefing it is usually much more specific and pointed information that we have.
So general CI brief, sure, you might talk about how different foreign actors use different tools or vectors to do their work. But if you were conducting a defensive briefing, in my view, it’s more likely that it would be specific and sort of narrowly described to the specific threat or risk that you’re briefing on.
Q So you don’t know if someone who received a lot of defensive briefings would have their sophistication of weaknesses in email and servers enhanced by being told such a thing in defensive briefings?
A No, I don’t know. I don’t know.
Q Finally, you’d mentioned earlier that Mr. Priestap was –AD Priestap was kind of a worrier. What was his relationship with Mr. Strzok? I know he would be Mr. Strzok’ s boss at the time that he’s the AD.
A Yes. They were very close.
Q Very close.
A They -• professionally. I mean, they both had a lot of respect for each other. Both have had long careers in the Counterintelligence Division. And so both respect each other’s instincts and knowledge and experience working (I targets. So they had a very strong professional relationship.
Q So no work tensions or -•
A No, sir.
Q –issues about decisions made?
A No, no. No, sir.
Q Okay, thank you.
Mr. Somers. I’d like to ask you about an email chain. There’s only one email on the chain in particular, but you can take a look at that document. I’m mostly interested in the email from Peter Strzok to you at 7:18 p.m.
Ms. Page. One second.
Mr. Somers. That email says: We need all of their names to scrub and we should give them ours for the same purpose. My first question is, who is “their” and “them,” to your knowledge?
Ms. Jeffress. It’s a long article. Do you know which part of the article this relates to?
Mr. Somers. I don’t know which part of the article in particular it relates to. I’m just looking at the email from Strzok to Ms. Page, and it looks like —
Ms. Page. I don’t Mr. Somers. –she understood at the time, at least, what that was. Ms. Page. I’m not sure. I’m sorry.
Mr. Somers. Okay. What about “scrub”?
[5:13 p.m.]
Ms. Page. I don’t know what we’re referring to, but that’s usually a “let’s see if we have any information in our holdings relating to these individuals.” But I don’t know which individuals we’re talking about here.
BY MR. SOMERS:
Q Well, I took “their” and “them” –one question on this “their” and “them” to mean another agency and not –I took it to be a list of their names. Could that –not the people in the article, not names of people in the article. I took it to be an agency or a subagency.
A Oh, I don’t –I would have taken it to mean something in the article, but I don’t –I don’t remember this particular email as I sit here today.
Q If you look up to the second email from the top: That’s what Bill said. I suggested we need to exchange our entire list.
A I’m not positive, sir. I’m sorry.
Q Okay. All right.
Mr. Somers. I think that’s all we have for this. All right. So I think that will conclude our interview. And I want to thank you again for appearing both on Friday and again today. And that’ll close the interview.
Ms. Page. Thank you.
[Whereupon, at 5:14 p.m., the interview was concluded.]

205 COMMITTEE SENSITIVE Certificate of Deponent/Interviewee
I have read the foregoing,___pages, which contain the correct transcript of the answers made by me to the questions therein recorded.
Witness Name
Date
Finis
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