FBI agent who criticized Trump sues over firing
Peter Strzok, who aided Mueller, alleges unfair treatment and invasion of privacy.
WASHINGTON — A veteran FBI agent who wrote derogatory text messages about President Trump filed a lawsuit Tuesday charging that the bureau caved to “unrelenting pressure” from the president when it fired him.
The lawsuit from Peter Strzok also alleges that he was unfairly punished for expressing his political opinions and that the Justice Department violated his privacy when it shared hundreds of his text messages with reporters.
“The campaign to publicly vilify Special Agent Strzok contributed to the FBI’s ultimate decision to unlawfully terminate him,” the lawsuit says, “as well as to frequent incidents of public and online harassment and threats of violence to Strzok and his family that began when the texts were first disclosed to the media and continue to this day.”
The complaint, which names as defendants Atty. Gen. William Barr and FBI Director Christopher A. Wray, revisits a political drama that was seized on by conservative critics of special counsel Robert S. Mueller III’s Russia investigation as proof that the bureau was biased against Trump. Multiple investigations are underway examining whether the FBI acted properly during the Russia investigation, and Strzok remains a target of Trump’s scornful tweets.
The lawsuit seeks reinstatement to the FBI, back pay and a declaration that the government violated his rights.
A Justice Department spokeswoman declined to comment, and representatives of the FBI did not immediately respond to a request seeking comment.
The lawsuit provides new details about the circumstances of Strzok’s firing and amounts to the latest defense of his reputation, coming months after a fiery congressional hearing in which he insisted that his personal views never influenced his work.
Strzok, a veteran counterintelligence agent who helped lead FBI investigations into former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s use of a private email server and ties between the Trump campaign and Russia, was removed from Mueller’s team after the texts with FBI lawyer Lisa Page came to light. He was fired from the FBI last August.
Many of the texts, on FBI cellphones, were bitingly critical of Trump during his 2016 run for office. They were found by the Justice Department’s inspector general during its investigation of the FBI’s Clinton email inquiry.
The watchdog office criticized Strzok and Page, with whom he was having an affair, for their judgment in sending the messages, but did not find that the Clinton email investigation was compromised by political bias.
In the lawsuit, Strzok attorney Aitan Goelman says the FBI deputy director who fired him was responding to “unrelenting pressure from President Trump and his political allies in Congress and the media.”
That deputy, David Bowdich, overruled the recommendation of a disciplinary official that Strzok be merely demoted and suspended without pay, and denied him the chance to appeal.
Bowdich said at the time that Strzok’s “sustained pattern of bad judgment in the use of an FBI device” for texting called into question decisions made during the Clinton email investigation and the early stages of the Russia inquiry.
The complaint says the campaign to fire Strzok included “constant tweets and other disparaging statements” from Trump, as well as the president’s direct appeals to Wray and Barr’s predecessor as attorney general, Jeff Sessions, to fire Strzok.
The lawsuit says the administration discriminated against his viewpoint by firing him even though other government officials who have supported Trump in the workplace have kept their jobs. It notes that the White House has not fired counselor Kellyanne Conway despite the determination that she violated the Hatch Act — a law that limits political activity by government workers — by criticizing Democratic presidential candidates while speaking in her official capacity.
“The Trump administration has consistently tolerated and even encouraged partisan political speech by federal employees, as long as this speech praises President Trump and attacks his political adversaries,” the complaint contends.
The lawsuit also says the Justice Department set out to smear Strzok’s reputation and humiliate him when it disclosed nearly 400 text messages he had sent or received.
In the complaint, Strzok also aims to explain some of the texts that have attracted the most negative attention, including one in which he told Page “we’ll stop” a Trump presidency.
Conservatives interpreted the text as Strzok saying that he would work to prevent Trump from being elected, but the lawsuit says the message was actually meant to reassure Page that the American people would not support a Trump candidacy.