FBI fires agent who criticized president

WASHINGTON — Peter Strzok, the FBI senior counterintelligence agent who disparaged President Trump in inflammatory text messages and helped oversee the Hillary Clinton email and Russia investigations, was fired for violating bureau policies, Strzok’s lawyer said Monday.

Trump and his allies seized on the text messages — exchanged during the 2016 campaign with a former FBI lawyer, Lisa Page — in assailing the Russia investigation as an illegitimate “witch hunt.” Strzok was a key figure in the early months of the inquiry.

Aitan Goelman, his lawyer, confirmed Strzok’s dismissal.

In one message exchange, Page asks: Trump is “not ever going to become president, right? Right?!” Strzok responds: “No. No he won’t. We’ll stop it.” The inspector general, who uncovered the messages, found no evidence that the pair imposed their political views on their investigative decisions but cited that exchange as “not only indicative of a biased state of mind but, even more seriously, implies a willingness to take official action to impact the presidential candidate’s electoral prospects.”

After the inspector general uncovered the text messages, the special counsel, Robert Mueller, removed Strzok from his team last summer.

“This decision should be deeply troubling to all Americans,” Goelman said of the firing. “A lengthy investigation and multiple rounds of congressional testimony failed to produce a shred of evidence that Special Agent Strzok’s personal views ever affected his work.”

In a heated congressional hearing last month, Strzok expressed “significant regret” for the texts and rebutted the president’s attacks on the Russia inquiry. “This investigation is not politically motivated; it is not a witch hunt; it is not a hoax,” he said.