While the IG report found that Strzok’s politics did not affect his handling of the Clinton email probe, it did not downplay the significance of the text. The message was “not only indicative of a biased state of mind but, even more seriously, implies a willingness to take official action to impact the presidential candidate’s electoral prospects,” the report concluded. Still, the IG “did not find documentary or testimonial evidence” that Strzok acted on that bias, at least with regard to the Clinton email investigation. (The IG did not review the handling of the Russia investigation, which is ongoing.)

Contrary to conspiracy theories that Page and Strzok were part of a deep-state conspiracy to damage Trump’s campaign using the Russia investigation, Strzok once said, according to the new texts, that he wasn’t convinced there was any “there there” to the allegations that Trump’s campaign colluded with Russia. “I hesitate in part because of my gut sense and concern there’s no big there there,” Strzok told Page in May 2017, after working on the investigation for nearly a year. He was at that point still weighing whether to join Mueller’s team.

Former FBI agents who knew and worked with Strzok have acknowledged to me in the past that both officials should have been more circumspect with their comments to each other, given the highly politicized nature of both the Clinton and Russia probes. On the new “we’ll stop it” text, a person familiar with Page’s thinking, who spoke on the condition of anonymity in order to speak freely, said that Strzok’s message was “unfortunate” and “hard to defend.” But the former agents have broadly characterized the duo, and Strzok in particular, as professionals who never expressed political opinions when conducting investigations. And they emphasized that one agent does not have the power to change the course of an entire investigation, no matter what Trump’s allies might continue to argue.

Even if “there was something he could actually do, he was one gear in a big machine,” former FBI agent Frank Montoya Jr. told me on Thursday night. “He could make recommendations, he could advocate for different courses of action, but he was just one among many in a team that could do that. He was not the senior decision-maker.” Montoya made a similar point to one that Strzok and Page made to investigators, according to the report: While the Trump investigation was kept a secret, the Clinton investigation was effectively reopened just days before the election. “If Strzok really wanted to ‘stop’ Trump before the election, why not leak the Russia investigation?” Montoya asked. Still, he said, “while everyone, even FBI employees, have right to an opinion, his texts were dumb. No other way to color it.”

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