FBI agent's text suggests Obama wanted to 'know everything' the bureau was doing

AP

Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton

• A newly released text reveals that former FBI investigator Peter Strzok discussed drafting talking points for President Barack Obama, purportedly to inform the president about the FBI's investigation into Hillary Clinton's private email use as secretary of state.
• In September 2016, Strzok said in a text that "potus wants to know everything we're doing."
• Texts exchanged between Strzok and FBI lawyer Lisa Page have been a source of controversy since the Justice Department released messages in which the two officials disparaged President Donald Trump.

Nearly two months before former FBI Director James Comey announced the bureau was reopening its investigation into Hillary Clinton's private email use as secretary of state, two FBI officials discussed drafting talking points for President Barack Obama because he "wants to know everything we're doing."

That's according to a report published online Tuesday by the Senate Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs, first reported by Fox News early Wednesday morning.

On September 2, 2016, Peter Strzok, one of the leading FBI agents investigating Clinton's email use, texted FBI lawyer Lisa Page that Obama wanted an update on everything the bureau was doing.

While it's unclear exactly what Obama wanted to know about, the committee report said the "text raises additional questions about the type and extent of President Obama's personal involvement in the Clinton email scandal and the FBI investigation of it."

A footnote in the report suggests it cannot be confirmed that Strzok's text was related to the FBI's investigation of Clinton's private email server, but presumes that it is related to the probe because the message was not redacted.

Despite the ambiguity over the context of the text, President Donald Trump seized on the news Wednesday, tweeting that the "NEW FBI TEXTS ARE BOMBSHELLS!"

The report - a review of the FBI's handling of the Clinton email investigation - was compiled by the committee's Republican chair Sen. Ron Johnson and committee staff.

Peter Strzok played leading roles in the FBI investigations into Clinton's emails and into Russia's meddling in the 2016 presidential election.

Last summer, Robert Mueller, the special counsel investigating alleged collusion between the Trump campaign and Russia during the 2016 election, removed Strzok from his team after discovering text messages in which Strzok and Page disparaged Trump.

In recent months, the Department of Justice handed two batches of text messages over to Congress that Strzok and Page exchanged during the 2016 presidential campaign and after the election. In some of those messages, Strzok and Page spoke ill of Trump, even calling him an "idiot" at one point.

"OMG I am so depressed," Strzok wrote to Page the day after Trump's election victory.

"I don't know if I can eat. I am very nauseous," Page replied.

Republicans point to the texts as evidence that the FBI is biased against Trump. Last month, Republican attacks against the FBI intensified when the DOJ announced it was unable to preserve thousands of texts exchanged between Strzok and Page because of a software glitch on Samsung phones.

Days later, DOJ Inspector General Michael Horowitz told Congress that his office had recovered those messages.