May 18, 2017, shortly after the appointment of special counsel Robert S. Mueller III
Strzok: “For me, and this case, I personally have a sense of unfinished business. I unleashed it with [the Clinton investigation]. Now I need to fix it and finish it.”
Strzok was added to Mueller’s team where he served until the text messages with Page came to light. The messages on this day center on whether joining that team was the proper decision.
About the message above, Strzok told investigators that he wasn’t saying that he hoped to make up for having “unleashed” Trump via the election-influencing Clinton email investigation by “fixing” the problem via the Russia investigation.
“It wasn’t so much the investigation about [Clinton],” he said, “but then how it played into, how it was being portrayed in the political environment, how it was being leveraged by the government of Russia and all the social media disseminations.” What he wanted to fix, he said, was the misperception that Russia hadn’t tried to influence the election.
Page suggested that the “unfinished business” was “a reflection of our Director having been fired” — a reference to the firing of James B. Comey, whose termination as FBI director by Trump led to Mueller’s appointment. That firing was predicated on Comey’s handling of the Clinton investigation.
Strzok: “you and I both know the odds are nothing. If I thought it was likely I’d be there no question. I hesitate in part because of my gut sense and concern there’s no big there there.”
“As we looked at the various actors,” Strzok said to investigators about connections between Russia and people associated with the Trump campaign, “the question [was,] … was that part of a broad, coordinated effort, or was that simply a bunch of opportunists seeking to advance their own or individual agendas … which of that is it?”
During this exchange, Strzok also seemingly weighed become assistant director against “an investigation leading to impeachment.”
Page “said she interpreted Strzok’s reference to impeachment to mean he wanted to be involved in the Russia investigation because it was so important ‘it might lead to impeachment,’ not because ‘it will lead to impeachment,” the report reads.