FBI Secret Society Conspiracy

Overview

On January 23, 2018, Senator Ron Johnson of Wisconsin went on Fox News and dropped a bombshell — or what passed for one in the overheated atmosphere of the Trump-era FBI wars. “We have an informant who’s talking about a group of people within the FBI and Department of Justice,” he told host Bret Baier, his voice carrying the measured gravity of a man who believed he was exposing something enormous. “This ‘secret society’ — we have an informant that’s talking about it.”

The phrase “secret society” ricocheted across cable news and social media like a bullet in a steel room. Within hours, the theory had its full architecture: a clandestine cell of senior FBI agents, meeting off-site in undisclosed locations, plotting to destroy the Trump presidency from within. It was the Deep State theory rendered specific, given names and faces and, critically, a text message that seemed to prove it.

There was just one problem. The text message was a joke about Russian-themed calendars. And the whole edifice — one of the most consequential misinformation episodes in the already misinformation-saturated Trump era — collapsed within a week, though you would be forgiven for not noticing, because the retraction never achieved the velocity of the original claim.

Origins & History

The Strzok-Page Texts

To understand the “secret society” theory, you need to start with the relationship — personal and professional — between FBI counterintelligence agent Peter Strzok and FBI lawyer Lisa Page. The two were having an extramarital affair, a fact that became public knowledge in December 2017 when the Department of Justice Inspector General’s office discovered thousands of text messages between them during its investigation of the FBI’s handling of the Hillary Clinton email probe.

The texts were, in significant part, exactly what you would expect from two politically engaged people texting during the most contentious election cycle in modern American history. They called Trump an “idiot” and “loathsome.” They expressed horror at his candidacy. Page texted: “He’s not ever going to become president, right? Right?!” Strzok replied: “No. No he won’t. We’ll stop it.”

That last message — “We’ll stop it” — became perhaps the most scrutinized four words in FBI history. Strzok later testified that the “we” referred to American voters, not FBI agents, and that the text was a casual expression of political opinion, not a statement of operational intent. But in the fevered atmosphere of 2017-2018, with the Mueller investigation ongoing and Trump publicly attacking the FBI as a politically biased institution, the texts were a gift-wrapped confirmation of everything the president’s allies had been alleging.

The Text That Launched a Theory

The specific “secret society” text was sent on November 9, 2016 — the day after Trump’s election victory. In a chain about office trivia, Page and Strzok discussed Russian-themed novelty calendars that a colleague had brought back from a trip. Strzok texted:

“Are you even going to give out your calendars? Seems kind of depressing. Maybe it should just be the first meeting of the secret society.”

That was it. One text. A joke about gag-gift calendars in the context of post-election gallows humor. There was no follow-up text explaining logistics. No meeting minutes. No membership list. No other reference to any “secret society” in the remaining 50,000 texts the IG reviewed.

But when the text was released to Congress in January 2018, stripped of its context and fed into a media ecosystem primed for exactly this kind of revelation, it detonated.

The Political Amplification

Senator Ron Johnson, chairman of the Senate Homeland Security Committee, was the first to go public. His January 23 Fox News appearance — in which he claimed to have an “informant” with knowledge of the secret society — made the theory front-page news overnight. Johnson later clarified that his “informant” had not provided any corroborating evidence, but by then the narrative had escaped.

The same week, Johnson and Senator Jeff Sessions revealed that the FBI had experienced a “glitch” that resulted in five months of Strzok-Page texts (December 2016 through May 2017) being unavailable. This gap, they suggested, was suspicious — perhaps the FBI had deliberately destroyed evidence. When the texts were recovered through technical means a few weeks later and contained nothing about any secret society, the recovery received a fraction of the coverage the gap had generated.

Representative Trey Gowdy, then-chairman of the House Oversight Committee, was more measured. While he acknowledged the texts were troubling, he noted after viewing them in context: “I have seen the text. It appears to be an offhand comment.” He urged against overreading a joke. His caution was drowned out by louder voices.

Trump himself amplified the theory repeatedly, tweeting about the “Secret Society” within the FBI and using it as evidence that the Russia investigation was a politically motivated witch hunt.

The Inspector General Investigation

The DOJ Inspector General, Michael Horowitz, conducted the most comprehensive investigation into FBI conduct during the 2016 election. His June 2018 report on the Clinton email investigation ran 568 pages. Its conclusions were simultaneously devastating and exonerating — a combination that satisfied nobody completely.

Horowitz found that Strzok and Page’s texts reflected serious lapses in judgment and violated FBI policy regarding political expression. He found that Strzok’s decision to prioritize the Russia investigation over the Clinton laptop matter in October 2016 was one where political bias “was not the sole consideration” — his most damning finding. But he also found no evidence that political bias had affected the overall conduct or conclusions of the Clinton email investigation. And he found no evidence whatsoever of any “secret society” or clandestine group plotting against Trump.

A subsequent IG report on the origins of the Russia investigation, released in December 2019, found that the investigation (codenamed “Crossfire Hurricane”) was opened for a legitimate reason — information from an Australian diplomat about George Papadopoulos — and was not motivated by political bias. It did, however, document 17 “significant inaccuracies and omissions” in FISA applications targeting Carter Page (no relation to Lisa Page), providing substantial ammunition for those who believed the FBI had abused its surveillance powers.

Key Claims

• Senior FBI agents formed a clandestine group to undermine the Trump presidency. Proponents argued that the “secret society” text was a slip — an accidental revelation of an actual organization that met off-site to coordinate anti-Trump activities within the Bureau.

• The “insurance policy” text proved the FBI had a contingency plan to remove Trump. Strzok’s August 2016 text referencing an “insurance policy” was interpreted as evidence of a pre-planned operation to sabotage Trump’s presidency should he win.

• Missing texts were deliberately destroyed. The five-month gap in Strzok-Page texts was framed as an FBI cover-up, analogous to Nixon’s 18-minute tape gap, rather than the technical glitch Samsung/FBI IT described.

• The FBI’s Russia investigation was itself the conspiracy. The “secret society” claim was embedded in the broader theory — variously called Spygate or the “Russia hoax” — that the FBI, CIA, and Obama administration conspired to fabricate Russian collusion allegations against Trump.

Evidence & Debunking

The Text in Context

The debunking here is unusually straightforward. The “secret society” text exists within a chain of messages about office humor, Russian novelty items, and post-election commiseration. There is no preceding discussion of forming a group. There is no subsequent discussion of meetings, plans, membership, or activities. The phrase does not appear again in any of the 50,000 recovered texts.

Both Strzok and Page stated under oath that the comment was a joke. Their account is consistent with the textual context. No other evidence — from any source, including the FBI informant Johnson referenced — has ever corroborated the existence of an actual secret society.

The Inspector General’s Findings

Horowitz’s investigation, conducted over more than a year with access to all relevant FBI documents and personnel, found:

• No evidence of a secret society or clandestine group within the FBI
• No evidence that the Russia investigation was opened for political reasons
• Evidence that Strzok and Page’s political views were inappropriate but not determinative of investigative decisions
• Significant procedural failures in FISA applications, which were real problems but distinct from the “secret society” claim

What Remains Legitimate

The “secret society” theory was debunked. But the broader concerns it was embedded in were not entirely without basis. The Strzok-Page texts did reveal FBI agents expressing strong political opinions while working on politically sensitive investigations. The FISA application errors documented by the IG were serious and systematic. The FBI’s institutional culture during this period — where senior officials texted casually about the subjects of active investigations — raised legitimate questions about professionalism and bias.

The problem was that a legitimate set of institutional concerns was inflated, through a single joke text and deliberate political amplification, into a conspiracy theory about a shadowy cabal — and the debunking of the conspiracy made it easier to dismiss the legitimate concerns along with it.

Cultural Impact

The “FBI secret society” theory, despite its brief shelf life as a specific claim, had outsized cultural consequences. It became a foundational brick in the wall of Deep State mythology — the idea that unelected federal employees constituted an embedded opposition government working to thwart the democratic will.

For Trump’s supporters, the Strzok-Page texts — even if the “secret society” comment was a joke — confirmed a visceral suspicion: that the people investigating the president despised him. This was, in fact, true of Strzok and Page individually. The leap — from “two FBI agents didn’t like Trump” to “the FBI as an institution was conspiring against Trump” — was enormous, but the texts made it feel intuitive.

The episode also demonstrated a recurring pattern in Trump-era media: a claim would be launched at maximum volume, dominate 48-72 hours of news coverage, and then be quietly retracted while the next claim took its place. By the time the “secret society” had been debunked, the news cycle had moved on. The retraction never caught up with the allegation. Polling consistently showed that large percentages of Republican voters believed the FBI had conspired against Trump — a belief that the “secret society” story helped cement even after it was disproven.

The fallout was personal as well as political. Peter Strzok was fired in August 2018. Lisa Page resigned in May 2018. Both received death threats. Page later told The Daily Beast that Trump’s public mockery of their text messages at rallies — where he read them aloud in a suggestive voice to cheering crowds — constituted a form of sexual harassment and public humiliation that went far beyond any accountability for their genuine professional failings.

The episode contributed to a broader erosion of institutional trust that continues to shape American politics. The FBI’s public approval rating among Republicans dropped from 65% in 2014 to 17% in 2023, according to Gallup — a collapse driven in large part by the narrative that the Bureau was a politically weaponized institution.

Timeline

• July 2016 — FBI opens “Crossfire Hurricane” investigation into Russian interference
• August 2016 — Strzok sends “insurance policy” text to Page
• November 8, 2016 — Trump wins presidential election
• November 9, 2016 — Strzok sends “secret society” text about Russian novelty calendars
• May 2017 — Robert Mueller appointed as Special Counsel
• July 2017 — Strzok removed from Mueller’s team after IG discovers texts
• December 2017 — Strzok-Page texts publicly revealed; “We’ll stop it” message becomes national news
• January 23, 2018 — Senator Ron Johnson claims on Fox News that an informant has confirmed a “secret society” within the FBI
• January 24-25, 2018 — “Secret society” dominates cable news; GOP senators demand investigation
• January 25, 2018 — Trey Gowdy views text in context, says it “appears to be an offhand comment”
• January 26, 2018 — Johnson walks back claim, says he may have been “making too much” of the text
• February 2018 — Missing five months of texts recovered; contain nothing about a secret society
• May 2018 — Lisa Page resigns from the FBI
• June 2018 — IG Horowitz report finds no evidence of political bias affecting Clinton investigation
• August 2018 — Peter Strzok fired from the FBI
• December 2019 — IG report on Russia investigation finds legitimate basis for probe but documents 17 FISA errors
• 2023 — Strzok settles lawsuit against FBI and DOJ over his firing

Sources & Further Reading

• Office of the Inspector General, DOJ. A Review of Various Actions by the Federal Bureau of Investigation and Department of Justice in Advance of the 2016 Election. June 2018
• Office of the Inspector General, DOJ. Review of Four FISA Applications and Other Aspects of the FBI’s Crossfire Hurricane Investigation. December 2019
• Strzok, Peter. Compromised: Counterintelligence and the Threat of Donald J. Trump. Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2020
• Baker, Peter and Nicholas Fandos. “Show Me the Evidence: Senator Who Cited ‘Secret Society’ Backtracks.” The New York Times, January 25, 2018
• Schmidt, Michael S. and Adam Goldman. “FBI Agent Sent Anti-Trump Texts Is Fired.” The New York Times, August 13, 2018
• Page, Lisa. Interview with The Daily Beast, December 2019
• Senate Homeland Security Committee Hearing Transcripts, January 2018
• Zapotosky, Matt. “FBI Agent Peter Strzok, Who Traded Anti-Trump Texts, Fired.” The Washington Post, August 13, 2018

Related Theories

• Deep State — the broader theory of embedded government opposition to elected leaders
• Spygate Conspiracy — claims that the Obama administration spied on the Trump campaign
• Russian Disinformation — the role of Russian intelligence operations in U.S. politics