“I know there’s no fathomable way that I have committed any crime at all, let alone treason.”

Lisa Page, the married, former FBI agent whose affair and anti-President Donald Trump text messages with fellow former FBI agent Peter Strzok made international news, has broken her silence.

Unlike Strzok, who testified before Congress about his messages and involvement with both investigations into the Trump campaign and Hillary Clinton’s server, Page has remained silent for the near two-year stretch since the story became tabloid fodder.

In Her Own Words

Page decided that it was time to defend herself after the president mocked her at a rally in October with an illicit fake orgasm.

“Honestly, his demeaning fake orgasm was really the straw that broke the camel’s back,” she said in an interview with The Daily Beast published on Sunday.

I had stayed quiet for years hoping it would fade away, but instead it got worse,” the former FBI agent said. “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.”

Press reports have indicated that the Justice Department Inspector General’s report, coming on Dec. 9, will exonerate Page from the accusation that her personal feelings towards President Trump affected her involvement in the Russia investigation.

But Page is not hopeful that any exoneration will quiet the roar of those who believe she is a deep state operative.

“While it would be nice to have the IG confirm publicly that my personal opinions had absolutely no bearing on the course of the Russia investigations, I don’t kid myself that the fact will matter very much for a lot of people. The president has a very loud megaphone,” she said.

“It’s almost impossible to describe,” she said of the president accusing her of being a criminal. “It’s like being punched in the gut. My heart drops to my stomach when I realize he has tweeted about me again. 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 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. To try to further destroy my life. It never goes away or stops, even when he’s not publicly attacking me,” she said.

Page said that the attacks from the president have affected her daily life in a negative way and she only wants her life and privacy back.

“I wish it didn’t,” Page said. “I’m someone who’s always in my head anyway – so now otherwise normal interactions take on a different meaning. Like, when somebody makes eye contact with me on the Metro, I kind of wince, wondering if it’s because they recognize me, or are they just scanning the train like people do? It’s immediately a question of friend or foe? Or if I’m walking down the street or shopping and there’s somebody wearing Trump gear or a MAGA hat, I’ll walk the other way or try to put some distance between us because I’m not looking for conflict. Really, what I wanted most in this world is my life back.”

Hillary And Russia Investigations

“We knew that the case was going to get picked apart,” she said of the Clinton Email investigation. “And we know there’s not a person on the FBI team or the DOJ team who thinks this is not the right result. There is no case to be brought here. But it’s very busy. It’s very intense. Director [James] Comey was very clear he wanted this completed as soon as humanly possible and outside of the political environment. So there was a real focus to get it done before the conventions that were happening that summer. And so that’s what we did.”

“There are two things that happen in the late summer of 2016,” she said. “The first, of course, is that the FBI gets the predication [via George Papadopoulos], which starts the Russian investigation. We learn about the possibility that there’s someone on the Trump campaign coordinating with the Russian government in the release of emails, which will damage the Clinton campaign.”

“We were very deliberate and conservative about who we first opened on because we recognized how sensitive a situation it was,” she said. “So the prospect that we were spying on the campaign or even investigating candidate Trump himself is just false. That’s not what we were doing.”

She called the firing of former FBI Director James Comey “horrible” and a devastating moment at the FBI. It was like a funeral, only worse, because at least when someone dies, you get to come together and celebrate and talk about that person. He was still alive. But he was inaccessible to us. It jolted the ranks and the investigation. It was so abrupt. He was there one day and gone the next.”

The Personal Toll

“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 said. “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.”

She said that she does not believe that her texts to Strzok asking for reassurance that President Trump would not win and talking about an insurance policy in case he did are too political.

“No. No he’s not. We’ll stop it,” Strzok responded to one of her messages which has been read by many supporters of the president to mean that the agent believing they could influence the election.

“I don’t engage in any sort of partisan politicking at all. But having an opinion and sharing that opinion publicly or privately with another person is squarely within the permissible bounds of the Hatch Act. It’s in the regs. Yeah, it says it plainly. I’m thinking, I know I’m a federal employee, but I retain my First Amendment rights. So I’m really not all that worried about it,” she said.

Page went on to blame the president for ruining her life, and the Justice Department for sacrificing her, in the lengthy interview.

“When Roger Stone got convicted, he asked, why isn’t Page in jail too? Not to mention, you know, his truly reprehensible, degrading stunt at his rally, in which he used my name to simulate an orgasm. And I don’t even know when the president’s going to attack next. And when it happens, it can still sort of upend my day. You don’t really get used to it,” she said.