OPINION:
Lisa Page, the now-famous former FBI lawyer who was outed as an adulterous anti-Donald Trumper during the now-defunct — nothing to see there, go home, folks — Russia collusion-slash-conflict-of-interest investigation into the president, has come forward, finally, to publicly speak.
And of what does she choose to speak? Of how mean old Trump has forced her to shed her supposedly preferred quiet life and speak.
Of how Trump, that “intimidating,” “demeaning,” dastardly Trump, has forced her to return to the public stage and publicly speak.
Page, the victim.
What public relations’ firm told her to play that card?
What a hoot. Last time the American public was treated to such damsel in distress pleadings was in 1998, when media and attorneys alike swirled and swooned over a blue dress and the finger-wagging of a president named Bill Clinton. But let’s be clear here: Page may be taking great pains to paint herself as a poor, poor innocent caught up in the political furies of an angry president. But she’s no Monica Lewinsky.
Lewinsky was a young intern, wide-eyed at the attention paid to her by the most powerful man, at the time, on planet Earth.
Page is a near-40s-something, ex-career government insider, tied to lying Andrew McCabe, the former FBI deputy director; tied to Trump-hating, Trump-mocking James Comey, the fired FBI director. Tied to Peter Strzok, disgraced FBI agent — the guy who sparked headlines such as this, from The Washington Examiner: “Peter Strzok’s wife discovered Lisa Page affair on his phone, DOJ reveals.”
Page is hardly a fresh-faced newbie, naive in the ways of politics, unschooled of the goings-on of Deep State style strategizing. And as her texts show, she’s hardly in the camp of Trump friendlies.
Now she’s striking the innocent pose.
“I had stayed quiet for years hoping it would fade away, but instead it got worse,” Page said in an interview with The Daily Beast during which she complained bitterly of Trump’s merciless mocking of her at rallies and on Twitter.
It’s his comments, she said, that has forced her back into the public spotlight — a spotlight, we’re to believe, she disdained, during her yearslong political career, of ever entering in the first place.
“It had been so hard not to defend myself, to let people who hate me control the narrative,” Page said. “I decided to take my power back. … It’s like being punched in the gut [when] the president of the United States is calling me names to the entire world. He’s demeaning me and my career. It’s sickening … but it’s also very intimidating.”
And then she adds: “And when the president accuses you of treason by name, despite the fact that I know there’s no fathomable way that I have committed any crime at all, let alone treason, he’s still somebody in a position to actually do something about that.”
Poor Page.
Poor Page?
Hardly.
Here’s a woman with a known talent for lying — how else to describe someone who successfully, day after day, engages in an adulterous affair? — and who served in her FBI legal position with a “biased state of mind” with a possible “willingness to take official action to impact the presidential candidate’s electoral prospects,” is how the Justice Department’s inspector general, Michael Horowitz, put it, in reference to his conclusion about the Page-Strzok texts.
And now she’s coming out, supposedly reluctantly, to defend her honor and good name from that scoundrel in the White House?
Sniff. Whiff. This hardly meets the smell test.
More to truth, Page is speaking now because of this little bit of news, reported by The Daily Beast: “On Dec. 9, the Justice Department inspector general report into Trump’s charges that the FBI spied on his 2016 campaign will come out.”
Page is simply trying to get ahead of the narrative.
But foisting an image of victimhood? Come on, now. It may have worked, at least partially, for Lewinsky.
Page, however, is way too old, way too connected, way too tainted and way too establishment — way too Deep State-like — to fool anyone with that same strategy.
• Cheryl Chumley can be reached at cchumley@washingtontimes.com or on Twitter, @ckchumley.
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