Republican Rep. Liz Cheney, a member of the House GOP leadership, said Sunday that former FBI agents Peter Strzok and Lisa Page may have committed treason with the anti-Donald Trump texts they sent during the 2016 election.

'I think what is really crucially important to remember here is that you had Strzok and Paige who were in charge of launching this investigation and they were saying things like we must stop this president, we need an insurance policy against this president,' she said on ABC's 'This Week.'

'That in my view when you have people that are in the highest echelons of the law enforcement of this nation saying things like that, that sounds an awful lot like a coup and it could well be treason,' she noted.

Republican Rep. Liz Cheney said former FBI agents Peter Strzok and Lisa Page may have committed treason with their anti-Donald Trump texts

'That's treason,' President Trump said last week, describing communications of FBI lovers Peter Strzok and Lisa Page

Her words echo President Trump's words last week, when he accused the two of treason.

And Cheney followed Trump's lead in singling out former FBI director James Comey and his former deputy at the bureau Andrew McCabe.

'We need to know what was Jim Comey's role in all of this? These people reported to him, Andy McCabe reported to him, what was Comey's role in that?,' she said.

She noted Attorney General Bill Barr would be focusing on all those topics when he probes the agency's actions during the 2016 election.

'That is what the attorney general is going to be focused on,' Cheney said.

At the White House on Thursday, President Trump railed against the FBI's look into his 2016 campaign to see if it had been infiltrated by Russians.

'If you look at Comey. If you look at McCabe; if you look at probably people – people higher than that,' he saids.

'If you look at Strzok, if you look at his lover, Lisa page, his wonderful lover,' Trump said at the White House. 'Two lovers. They talked openly. They didn't use their private server because they didn't want to get caught. So they used the government server,' Trump said of the two FBI agents whose relationship was revealed following an inspector general's report.

'That was not a good move,' Trump said.

White House press secretary Sarah Sanders also said Sunday that Barr would find out what happened at the FBI during that time.

'We already know that there was an outrageous amount of corruption that took place at the F.B.I. They leaked information. They lied. They were specifically working trying to take down the president, trying to hurt the president,' she said on NBC's 'Meet the Press.'

'We'll leave the final call up to the attorney general and he'll get to the bottom of it. But we think Americans deserve the truth. The president's asked for that. And we should expect nothing less.'

She added: 'There's a lot more there that we still need to know. And we're going to let the attorney general do his job.'

Trump has complained about a growing list of Obama-era Justice Department officials in the past, calling many of them 'traitors' and saying the Mueller probe was 'treasonous'; pictured, clockwise from top left, are former FBI Director James Comey, his former deputy Andrew McCabe, former FBI lawyer Lisa Page and former FBI senior agent Peter Strzok

NBC's Chuck Todd asked her: 'That's my point. It doesn't sound like you want him to do his job. It sounds like the president has already determined the outcome.'

Sanders referred to new executive order that empowers Barr to declassify information in connection with the probe of law enforcement actions.

'Chuck, that's the reason that he's granted the attorney general the authority to declassify that information, to look at all the documents necessary is so that we can get to the very bottom of what happened. Once again, we already know about some wrongdoing. The president's not wrong in that. But he wants to know everything that happened and how far and how wide it went,' she said.

And she argued that 'the people that were responsible and that were part of this unprecedented obstruction and corruption at the F.B.I., those people should certainly be held responsible and be held accountable and the president expects that to take place.'

Todd asked her: 'So he expects an outcome that he wants, not an outcome that the facts lead to.'

'Chuck, I think you're trying to muddy the waters too much here. We already know, once again that there was wrongdoing,' she replied.

Attorney General Bill Barr has opened an investigation into how the Justice Department's broad Russia probe began

White House press secretary Sarah Sanders said that Barr would find out what happened at the FBI during that time

A federal law defines treason as an action that 'levies war' against the United States 'or adheres to their enemies, giving them aid and comfort within the United States or elsewhere.'

The crime is punishable by death, or by a jail sentence that's 'not less than five years.'

Barr has opened an investigation into how the Justice Department's broad Russia probe began, including the process through which the DOJ persuaded a judge in a secret federal court to grant surveillance warrants against then-Trump foreign policy adviser Carter Page.

Barr told Fox News last week that his preliminary look isn't reassuring.

'I've been trying to get answers to the questions and I've found that a lot of the answers have been inadequate and some of the explanations I've gotten don't hang together,' Barr said. 'In a sense I have more questions today than when I first started.'

'People have to find out what the government was doing during that period,' he said. 'If we're worried about foreign influence, for the very same reason we should be worried about whether government officials abuse their power and put their thumb on the scale.'

Barr emphasized that he hadn't yet drawn any conclusions.

'I'm not saying that happened but it's something we have to look at,' he said.

Trump has long believed that Obama-era DOJ officials plotted to prevent his victory over Hillary Clinton, citing text messages from a former FBI agent and his FBI lawyer paramour.

Peter Strzok and Lisa Page famously chatted that they would 'stop' Trump's ascent. They both worked on the FBI's initial counter intelligence investigation into Trump's campaign and on Special Counsel Robert Mueller's expansive investigation.

Durham, the new spy-hunter, has previously served as a special prosecutor investigating allegations of impropriety by intelligence officials

In an August 2016 text message exchange, the two agents - who were having an extramarital affair - talked about Trump's chance of being elected president.

'[Trump's] not ever going to become president, right? Right?!' Page texted Strzok.

'No. No he won't. We'll stop it,' Strzok responded.

In another text, they spoke of an 'insurance policy' against Trump. Page later told lawmakers this referred to the Russia investigation.

Barr appointed U.S. Attorney for the District of Connecticut John Durham to investigate the origins of the Russia probe.

Durham will examine whether the FBI's methods of collecting intelligence on Trump's 2016 campaign, which ultimately led to the investigation, were legal.

Previously, Durham served as a special prosecutor investigating improper behavior by intelligence officials.

The attorney general signaled during a hearing before the Senate Judiciary Committee last month that he wanted to review the law enforcement agency's surveillance of the Trump campaign. He said 'spying did occur,' but clarified that it was not necessarily illegal spying.

Trump and Republicans assert that the FBI used 'illegal' and irregular methods to obtain the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act warrant, which allowed the agency to spy on Trump's campaign adviser Carter Page.

A former lawyer at the FBI admitted that the agency relied heavily on the Steele Dossier, a document authored by former British spy Christopher Steele that Russians allegedly used to blackmail Trump, to obtain a FISA warrant to spy on Page.