Former FBI lawyer Lisa Page admitted earlier this summer that more than nine months into the federal Russia probe, investigators had found no evidence of collusion between the Trump campaign and the Kremlin.
"I think this represents that even as far as May 2017, we still couldn't answer the question," Page told lawmakers during a closed-door deposition in July, according to Fox News.
The transcript shows Page stopped mid-answer, asking to consult with her counsel.
"It still existed in the scope of possibility that there would be literally nothing, probably not nothing nothing, as we probably knew more than that by that point," she went on to say. "But in the scheme of the possible outcomes, the most serious one obviously being crimes serious enough to warrant impeachment; but on the other scale that, you know, maybe an unwitting person was, in fact, involved in the release of information, but it didn't ultimately touch any senior, you know, people in the administration or on the campaign. And so the text just sort of reflects that spectrum."
Page had been answering a line of questioning by Rep. John Ratcliffe, R-Texas, who was pressing her on a May 2017 text exchange with former FBI agent Peter Strzok, with whom she was having an affair.
In a statement to Fox News, Ratcliffe said he "cannot provide the specifics of a confidential interview," before adding: "But I can say that Lisa Page left me with the impression, based on her own words, that the lead investigator of the Russian collusion case, Peter Strzok, had found no evidence of collusion after nearly a year."
In a text on May 18, one day after special counsel Robert Mueller was appointed, Strzok texted her: "[Y]ou 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."
Strzok was the lead investigator of the Russia collusion investigation. Texts between him and Page, such as the one on May 18, were described in a Justice Department inspector general report on the handling of the Clinton email probe by the FBI and DOJ. Strzok was fired last month; Page resigned in May.
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