There is no question about whether FBI agents Peter Strzok and Lisa Page and others in the Department of Justice were biased against President Donald Trump while he was seeking office, but the question is if the bias reached criminal levels, Rep. Darrell Issa said Tuesday morning.
"Under past investigations, nobody was held accountable," the California Republican told Fox News' "Fox & Friends."
"Obviously, now we are finding that they don't think they have enough, even when people conspire to have a, quote, 'insurance policy' against the president.
"So, what is the standard for the American people to expect, and then, aren't we going to have a higher standard for the Department of Justice lawyers, for the Department of Justice FBI agents? At what point is it bias?"
His comments came as DOJ Inspector General Michael Horowitz and FBI Director Christopher Wray head to the House Judiciary Committee on Tuesday for a second day of testimony on Capitol Hill.
On Monday, while the pair testified before the Senate Judiciary Committee, Wray said the FBI is determined not to repeat the mistakes outlined in Horowitz' watchdog report about how Hillary Clinton's email investigation was handled.
"Yesterday, you heard Michael Horowitz contort and try to deal with the term bias...of course, these people had clear bias," said Issa Tuesday.
"The question is, do they have criminal bias? Did they have bias that he could execute on? And I think we have to get the American people to understand, of course they had bias. Of course, they had adverse process. And, of course, they wanted to do the president in."
The question remains, though, if the matter approached the level of being a criminal conspiracy, said Issa.
"That seems to be where the IG draws the line," he said. "He doesn't seem to have the criminal conspiracy, but he certainly has a conspiracy built on bias."
Issa said when he questions Wray and Horowitz, he said he plans to drill down on comments made by former Deputy FBI Director Andy McCabe's comments about not remembering a meeting in his office during which Strzok referred to Page.
"First of all, I want to know what the insurance plan was," said Issa.
"Are we ever going to know that? I want to know why people are still working for the Department of Justice and the FBI who clearly showed wrongdoing. You know, there's this law and it sounds terrible, but there's a law that says you are not allowed to circumvent the system and hide your email and texts using private [services].
"And, yet, every time somebody does it, there is no consequence. There's got to begin to be some consequence circumventing the law to do things you are not supposed to do."
Sandy Fitzgerald ✉
Sandy Fitzgerald has more than three decades in journalism and serves as a general assignment writer for Newsmax covering news, media, and politics.
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