GOP grills FBI agent who said he would ‘stop’ Trump
WASHINGTON — Anfbiagent who worked on separate investigations into Democrat Hillary Clinton and President Donald Trump’s campaign defended himself behind closed doors to two House committees Wednesday as GOP lawmakers stepped up efforts to highlight what they say is bias at the Justice Department.
Peter Strzok exchanged anti-trump texts with a colleague, FBI attorney Lisa Page, as both worked on the Clinton investigation and briefly on special counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation into ties between Trump’s campaign and Russia.
House Republicans have seized on the texts as part of investigations into the Justice Department, the FBI and decisions that both made during the 2016 presidential election.
In one of the texts, from August 2016, Strzok wrote, “We’ll stop it,” in reference to a potential Trump election win.
Strzok’s questioning was still going on Wednesday evening, nine hours after it had started, and showed no signs of ending. Lawmakers were still expected to take Strzok into a classified session Wednesday to ask the most sensitive questions.
The interview also showed no signs of changing entrenched opinions — Republicans leaving for breaks appeared unconvinced by an internal Justice Department report released earlier this month that detailed Strzok and Page’s texts but ultimately found no evidence that bias affected the decision not to bring charges against Clinton.
Rep. Trey Gowdy, R-S.C., the chairman of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, said in an interview that bias is “pervasive” and “impossible to separate out.”