On Tuesday’s broadcast of CNN’s “Situation Room,” Representative Jim Himes (D-CT) stated that the outcry over messages between Peter Strzok and Lisa Page and the gap in the records of their messages is a conspiracy without any evidence “done to fuel mouth-breathers like Sean Hannity, and to excite the Republican activist base.”
Himes said, “I see this as the latest installment of Benghazi, where some little thread of a fact is used to create some massive scandal. How many people were punished or went to jail for anything related to Benghazi? … Uranium One, the other famous hobby horse of the right wing and Fox News, Uranium One, when Uranium One is studied, as it will be, it will show that there was absolutely no misbehavior by Hillary Clinton. The emails, I mean, again, they seize on one thing. In this case, they seize on the fact that lo and behold, shockingly, well-educated, thoughtful members of the FBI have political opinions, and they share them with each other. Wow. That is hardly news. The question is, and what they will never show, is whether political opinions that are held by FBI agents actually in any way, shape, or form affected work that they did. … What did Mueller do? He immediately took them off the investigation, which is probably exactly the right thing to do. But Wolf, this is all part, and the House — the famous House memo is just the latest and most dangerous installment of trying to save this president’s bacon by damaging and throwing mud on a storied institution, in this case, the FBI and the Department of Justice.”
Anchor Wolf Blitzer then asked, “Do you have confidence that the FBI is being fully transparent?
Himes answered, “I don’t know. And I hope that — you know, I have no way of knowing. I don’t know what the policies are for text retention. Again, we’ve seen a lot of these text messages. The FBI has produced a lot of text messages, that would indicate that they’re not trying to hide anything here. But, you know, it’s sort of hard to imagine — you know, these people had opinions. They expressed these opinions to each other. There’s no scandal there. Of course, the right wing and Republicans will do their best to create the sense of scandal, as they always do, around Hillary’s emails, around Benghazi, around Uranium One. But when these allegations are exposed to the light of day, as they were in Benghazi, as they will be in Uranium One, as they will be in the — when we finally get a chance to unpack and explain what was in this outrageous memo that came out of the House Intelligence Committee, the light of day will show that this is evidence-less conspiracy-building done to fuel mouth-breathers like Sean Hannity, and to excite the Republican activist base.”
Follow Ian Hanchett on Twitter @IanHanchett
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