Surprise, Surprise: There Is No "Secret Society" In the FBI

Despite claims otherwise from a handful of Republicans, text messages between two FBI officials, Lisa Page and Peter Strzok, do not, in fact, indicate the two are masterminds of a “secret society” operating within the FBI to plot against the president. The single text message that launched a thousand allegations—obtained Wednesday by ABC News—indicates a much more boring reality: That Page and Strzok were just supremely upset when Donald Trump won the presidential election.

Here’s the text in its curt, sarcastically melancholic entirety, courtesy of ABC News:

“Are you even going to give out your calendars? Seems kind of depressing. Maybe it should just be the first meeting of the secret society.”

That’s it. That’s it! That is the text Page sent to Strzok on November 9, 2016 that led chairman of the Senate Homeland Security Committee, Wisconsin Senator Ron Johnson, to parade around national news networks claiming a “whistleblower” told him that “a group of individuals within the FBI [were] holding secret offsite meetings,” all of which pointed to “corruption of the highest levels of the FBI.”

He went on to claim that he would “aggressively” pursue tracking down other messages between the two—even if it meant asking cell phone providers to turn them over.

There was “no apparent tie to other messages sent before or after it,”ABC reported. And here’s a text Strzok sent Page, also on Nov. 9, 2016: “Omg I am so depressed.”