In a new interview, former FBI lawyer Lisa Page wants everyone to feel sorry for her. Look, she made a mistake, but that’s no reason for President Trump to mock her, right?

Molly Jong-Fast got the first interview with Lisa Page for The Daily Beast (though apparently she thinks Peter Strzok is “hawt” so her sympathies are well-established), where she describes Page as someone who does “not aspire to fame or fortune,” but who found herself at the center of a whirlwind that is all Trump’s fault. It’s not the FBI’s fault, it’s not James Comey‘s fault, it’s not Andrew McCabe‘s fault, and it’s certainly not her fault. This is all Donald Trump’s fault for making fun of her and Peter Strzok for having an affair while investigating Trump.

And according to Lisa Page, the the affair between herself and Strzok was never supposed to be leaked to the media.

“At the end of July in 2017, I am informed by the DOJ Inspector General’s office that I’m under investigation for political text messages and honestly, I have no idea what they’re talking about,” she told me. “I have no recollection. And initially they’re very coy about it. They don’t tell me much about it. I don’t have the first clue what they’re talking about. What I do know is that my text messages will reveal that I had previously had an affair. I’m overwhelmed by dread and embarrassment at the prospect that OIG investigators, Andy, and my colleagues, now know or could learn about this deeply personal secret.”

The Inspector General’s office had guaranteed Page and Strzok that the affair would not be made public. But then, The Washington Post included the affair in its story. And in a slip of a second, Page goes from being an anonymous government lawyer to playing an unwilling and recurring role in Trump’s twisted tweetstorms.”

“So now I have to deal with the aftermath of having the most wrong thing I’ve ever done in my life become public,” she says. “And that’s when I become the source of the president’s personal mockery and insults. Because before this moment in time, there’s not a person outside of my small legal community who knows who I am or what I do. I’m a normal public servant, just a G-15, standard-level lawyer, like every other lawyer at the Justice Department.”

Note that Page calls the affair “the most wrong thing” she’s ever done. I might believe that IF she actually expressed regret for the affair (she doesn’t) or IF she had made a point of publicly apologizing – not to her husband, but to Peter Strzok’s wife. There is no sense of contrition in this interview, except to say that she was “overwhelmed by dread and embarrassment” that her WORK colleagues were going to find out about the affair. Maybe she did express some personal accountability in the interview and Jong-Fast left it out. But as it is printed, Lisa Page lays her personal embarrassment not at her own feet, but at Donald Trump’s for publicizing the affair once the media got a hold of that information.

Why is Page giving an interview now? Well, that Inspector General report is due to be released soon, and while she expects to be exonerated, there is probably going to be more deeply embarrassing information released. Lisa Page may not have committed a crime, but she did sleep with this sleazebag.

And if Peter Strzok is slammed in that IG report, how does Lisa Page’s judgment look now? After all, she’s the one texting this tool highly uncomplimentary comments about Donald Trump at best – on a government phone – and conducting an affair with a co-worker that could have opened them both up to blackmail! Imagine if someone other than the IG’s office had discovered that affair. Just how desperate to keep that “deeply personal secret” would Lisa Page have been if someone had attempted to blackmail her? There’s no apology for THAT to be found in this interview, either.

Now, despite the preliminary leaks of the IG report, we really don’t know what’s going to be in it. It’s likely that it won’t go far enough for those who have good reason to be deeply suspicious of the “deep state” and just how much the bureaucracy thinks it is above the rest of the citizenry. Remember that Peter Strzok has a lawsuit filed against the FBI for his firing, demanding reinstatment and back pay. There’s no contrition there at all.

So even if Lisa Page is legally exonerated from any wrongdoing, her incredibly poor judgment and obvious biases are going to follow her for at least as long as there is a legal battle with her name attached to it. And she wants all of us to feel sorry for her because Donald Trump mocked her. Oh, honey. I’m afraid that this particular line is very long, goes back many years, and you certainly aren’t the most special person in it. You can either join the line and wait for sympathy, or you can try and scrape up a little bit of dignity and rebuild your life. I doubt you will take that advice, though, since you let Molly Jong-Fast claim that you weren’t on any social media in her piece, so you rely on your husband and friends to tell you if Trump talked about you – and then you went and opened up your very own Twitter account. So much for staying out of the spotlight, huh?

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