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The fake orgasm was the final straw for Lisa Page.
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If you know Page’s name, it’s probably because President Trump has repeatedly mocked, taunted, and bashed her as politically biased, in dozens of tweets and public appearances. Page is the former FBI lawyer who worked on the investigation into Hillary Clinton’s handling of classified information as well as on special counsel Robert Mueller’s team. Trump has gone after Page and former FBI agent Peter Strzok — with whom Page had an affair — over texts between them that spoke negatively about Trump in the lead-up to the 2016 election.
Page, 39, had avoided speaking out publicly for 18 months but broke her silence in an interview with the Daily Beast published Sunday, saying Trump’s recent rally appearance mimicking her and Strzok in the throes of passion riled her enough to fight back. “His demeaning fake orgasm was really the straw that broke the camel’s back.”
“I had stayed quiet for years hoping it would fade away, but instead it got worse,” she told the Daily Beast. “It had been so hard not to defend myself, to let people who hate me control the narrative. I decided to take my power back.”
READ: The FBI just fired Peter Strzok, the agent who sent those anti-Trump texts
Page said it’s like a punch in the gut every time Trump tweets about her. But she also said she expects a forthcoming Department of Justice Inspector General’s report on FBI surveillance during the 2016 election will conclude she acted without bias toward the president.
“The president of the United States is calling me names to the entire world. He’s demeaning me and my career. It’s sickening,” she said in the interview. “But it’s also very intimidating because he’s still the president of the United States. 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.”
MORE: The wild story of the FBI lovers who used agency phones to go off on Trump is now a play
Trump’s GOP allies have routinely attacked Page and Strzok, claiming texts about an “insurance policy” show the investigation into Trump was a sham to remove him from office. The former FBI employees have an entirely different explanation for the texts, saying it was an analogy for the idea that even if Trump was projected to lose in ‘16, they still had to do their jobs.
Page said the messages that have hit the public lack context and were “selected for their political impact.”
“I don’t ever know when the president’s going to attack next,” she told the Daily Beast. “And when it happens, it can still sort of upend my day. You don’t really get used to it.”
Cover: Former FBI lawyer Lisa Page leaves following an interview with lawmakers behind closed doors on Capitol Hill in Washington, Friday, July 13, 2018. (AP Photo/Manuel Balce Ceneta)
