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22 not kept them on either investigation, but you would be open to an explanation, but you can't think of what that explanation could have been that would have persuaded you to keep them?

Mr. That's right. I try as a leader always to be open to things I might be missing, but absent something like that, I think it's likely -- again, it's hard to live a life you didn't live. But it's likely I wouldn't have kept them on the case for that reason, the reasons I said.

Mr. If you had gained familiarity with a text from Lisa Page where she said, "Please tell me Trump won't ever be President," and Strzok responded, "No, no, he won't, we'll stop it," do you think you would have kept them on the investigation?

Mr. I think of -- again, assuming you're recounting actual texts, I would think of it in the same way I thought of the ones you recounted earlier. I'd be concerned about bias or the perception of bias, and -- so I think about it the same way I thought about the earlier text you laid out.

Mr. Well, I want to remain open-minded to any other interpretations of that text, but what other interpretation could there be: Please tell me he won't be President. No, period, no, comma, He won't. We'll stop it.

What explanation could there be that was benign enough to leave them on the very investigation they were commenting on?

Mr. I don't know. And that -- I think that's what it means to be open-minded, to give people a chance to explain