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Peter Strzok and Lisa Page exchanged emails in Nov 2016 suggesting Strzok was in communication at the time with Joshua Pitcock, a long-time aide to Vice President-elect Mike Pence who later became Pence’s chief of staff. Pitcock was a member of the Trump campaign staff in 2016
The special feature of this connection is that Pitcock’s wife, referred to in the texts as “Katie,” was an FBI employee who until July 2016 had worked with Strzok on the Hillary Clinton emails investigation.
The concern of Grassley and Johnson is that Strzok seemed to be discussing an inappropriate connection with Pitcock, one that could have amounted to cultivating Pitcock as an inside source – effectively, a spy – against the Trump transition team.
Pitcock’s wife had reportedly recused herself from the Hillary investigation as soon as her husband’s boss (at the time, Trump) was made the Republican nominee for president, at the GOP convention in July 2016.
Presumably, her husband’s long connection with the V nominee also figured in Katie’s recusal. Joshua Pitcock had worked for Pence at least back to 2009. An authorization for a congressional trip he took in 2009 is archived at a watchdog site, signed by then-Congressman Pence.
Pitcock, as mentioned, worked on the Trump campaign staff and then had a role in the transition before becoming Pence’s chief of staff in January 2017. He left that job in August 2017.
This breaking news on Spygate has more questions than answers right now. One obvious set of questions would relate to Vice President Pence’s role in the sequence of events that culminated in Michael Flynn’s firing.
I see no reason to suspect Pence of bad faith against Flynn, and we know too little about Pitcock to make any claims at this point. But it is disconcerting to see, at this late date, how we keep being surprised with new pieces of information. None of them seems to be better news.
