STRZOK FIRING REAX FROM PRAISE TO IRE
Trump: He’s one of many ‘bad players’
Notoriously anti-Trump FBI agent Peter Strzok has been fired — and it’s either a blow to democracy or much-needed housecleaning to restore order, depending on who you ask.
U.S. Rep. Michael E. Capuano, a Democrat who represents much of Boston, tweeted yesterday, “Trump and his allies continue their campaign to undermine the FBI. Republicans held hours of hearings and turned up nothing new, but that didn’t matter. They overruled the FBI’s own disciplinary office and fired Agent Strzok anyways.”
But Boston-based civilrights attorney and political commentator Harvey Silverglate, a longtime critic of the FBI, saw it differently.
“Good riddance — he should have been fired a long time ago,” Silverglate told the Herald yesterday, calling Strzok’s actions “out of control.”
“You can’t get a more quintessential case of political interference than that,” Silverglate said.
The FBI had been reviewing Strzok’s employment over text messages he sent slamming President Trump and telling his bureau paramour “We’ll stop” him from getting elected. Trump’s allies have seized on the texts, saying they show the investigation into possible coordination between the Trump campaign and Russia is tainted by political bias.
Strzok, who sent the text messages to then-FBI lawyer Lisa Page, defended himself at a combative House hearing in July that spanned 10 hours. Strzok repeatedly insisted the texts, including ones in which he called Trump a “disaster,” did not reflect political bias and had not infected his work.
Strzok worked on the early stages of the Russia investigation in 2016 and worked on the special counsel’s team for a few months after Robert Mueller was appointed in May 2017.
Strzok was fired late Friday by FBI Deputy Director David Bowdich, said his lawyer, Aitan Goelman. He claimed the 21-year veteran of the FBI was removed because of political pressure and “to punish Special Agent Strzok for political speech protected by the First Amendment.”
Goelman also said the FBI had overruled the agency’s Office of Professional Responsibility, which he said had determined that a 60-day suspension and demotion from supervisory duties was “the appropriate punishment.”
The FBI had no immediate comment.
Strzok was also a lead investigator on the probe into Democratic presidential contender Hillary Clinton’s email server in 2016. An internal Justice Department report issued in June blamed Strzok and Page for creating an appearance of impropriety through their texts but found the outcome of the Clinton investigation was not marred by bias. Clinton was cleared in the probe.
Trump, who has repeatedly taken aim at Strzok, said in a tweet yesterday that Strzok is one of many “bad players” in the FBI and the Justice Department.
“It is a total Hoax,” Trump said of the Russia investigation. “No Collusion, No Obstruction - I just fight back!”