Special counsel Robert Mueller’s Russia investigation is facing a brewing scandal involving hyper-partisan texts written by his former team members, and the New York Times has already moved on to the “Republicans pounce” portion of the news cycle.

Because that’s often the modus operandi for these sorts of things.

Peter Strzok, who specializes in Russian counterintelligence, was removed from Mueller’s team this July. The decision to take Strzok off the Russia investigation came after the Justice Department’s inspector general discovered he had sent and received dozens of anti-Trump texts between August 2015 and 2016 from Lisa Page, an FBI lawyer with whom Strzok was having an affair. Page was also on Mueller's team, but only briefly. She returned to the FBI before the special counsel was made aware of the texts.

There's really no getting around it: The texts are extremely partisan.

“I can not believe Donald Trump is likely to be an actual, serious candidate for president,” Page wrote in one note.

Strzok wrote in another note, “God Hillary should win. 100,000,000-0.”

“And maybe you’re meant to stay where you are because you’re meant to protect the country from that menace,” Page wrote in another text. “I can protect our country at many levels, not sure if that helps”

If the texts were only partisan, and if Page and Strzok were just some low-level FBI staffers, this wouldn’t be much of a story. Everyone is entitled to his or her opinion. Even members of the FBI. The problem here is that Strzok isn’t a nobody.

He played a key role in launching the Russia investigation. In fact, Strzok personally signed the document making the probe into Moscow's alleged meddling official, according to CNN.

Strzok was also an important player in the FBI’s investigation of Hillary Clinton’s unauthorized use of a private email server when she headed the State Department. Strzok is the one who softened the language of the agency's findings on Clinton's behavior, changing it from "grossly negligent" to " extremely careless."

Shockingly enough, there's more. One specific Strzok text appears to suggest something that goes well beyond simple political opinion.

He told Page in one message: "I want to believe the path u threw out 4 consideration in Andy’s office-that there's no way he gets elected-but I'm afraid we can't take that risk. It's like an insurance policy in unlikely event u die be4 you're 40."

The “Andy” mentioned in his text may be a reference to FBI deputy director Andy McCabe. If that’s the case, this raises questions about whether McCabe was party to Strzok and Page’s hyper-partisan discussions and whether the former deputy director also signaled some sort of political allegiance.

FBI officials have yet to explain just what Strzok meant by "insurance policy."

It’s important to remember we’re seeing only excerpts of text conversations spanning several months. Before making any sort of final determination, we should wait to read the full content and context of their correspondences. That said, it’s also important to remember Mueller’s team deemed the texts damaging enough as to have Strzok removed from the investigation.

It’s a good first step, but it doesn’t quite address the issue of whether the clearly partisan and highly placed FBI investigator had his fingers on the scales during two major agency investigations.

This is a big headache for the FBI, and the texts raise legitimate questions about the Russia investigation and whether it’s being carried out in good faith. In short, this has all the makings of a major news story.

But the New York Times, which covered the initial texts after they were made available to the press Tuesday, looks like it’s already ready to move on. “ Text Messages in Hand, Republicans Plan to Accuse Justice Department of Bias,” read a headline published Wednesday. That's the significance – not the story itself, but the fact that Republicans are making an issue out of it.

Perhaps unsurprisingly, that Times report omits any mention of Strzok’s troubling “insurance policy” text.

We shouldn’t be all that surprised to see the Times has already rolled out the "GOP pounce" angle, even if it's only a few hours after Strzok’s texts became available to newsrooms. After all, the “ Republicans seize” trope is a tired but extremely popular trope of biased political journalism and with good reason.