Ex-FBI agent who played key role in Russia inquiry to release book
The former FBI counterintelligence agent Peter Strzok, who played a key role in the Russia investigation but whose text messages about Donald Trump made him a target of the president’s wrath, is releasing a book.
Compromised: Counterintelligence and the Threat of Donald J Trump is due out on 8 September, publisher Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Books & Media said.
The book promises an insider’s view on some of the most sensational and politically freighted investigations in modern US history, including into whether the 2016 Trump campaign coordinated with Russia to sway the presidential election.
Due out two months before the November election, the book adds to the list of first-person accounts from other senior FBI and justice department officials.
The former FBI director James Comey and former deputy director Andrew McCabe have each released books that describe aspects of the Trump investigation. Andrew Weissmann, a former justice department prosecutor who served on Mueller’s team, is due out with a book in September.
Other books about Trump and his administration, most recently by the former national security adviser John Bolton and the president’s niece, Mary Trump, have become instant bestsellers. HR McMaster, Bolton’s predecessor, also has a book due out in September, as does Michael Cohen, Trump’s former personal lawyer and fixer.
“Russia has long regarded the US as its ‘Main Enemy’ and I spent decades trying to protect our country from their efforts to weaken and undermine us,“Strzok said in a statement.
“In this book, I use that background to explain how the elevation by President Trump and his collaborators of Trump’s own personal interests over the interests of the country allowed Putin to succeed beyond Stalin’s wildest dreams, and how the national security implications of Putin’s triumph will persist through our next election and beyond.”
Strzok helped lead the investigation into whether the Democratic candidate Hillary Clinton mishandled classified information on the private email server she relied on as secretary of state. The FBI ultimately recommended against criminal charges.
Strzok also played a pivotal role in the Russia investigation, including interviewing the former national security adviser Michael Flynn about his contacts with the Russian ambassador during the presidential transition.
Strzok briefly served on special counsel Robert Mueller’s team but was removed after the justice department inspector general flagged derogatory text messages about Trump Strzok sent and received in 2016.
Strzok became a regular target of the president’s attacks, Trump alleging that Strzok and others plotted against his campaign and even committed treason – an accusation Strzok’s lawyer rejected as “beyond reckless”.
The texts were exchanged with an FBI lawyer, Lisa Page, and Trump routinely refers to the two of them as “the lovers”.
At a congressional hearing in July 2018, Strzok insisted he never allowed personal viewpoints to influence his work, though he did acknowledge being dismayed by Trump’s behavior.
The justice department inspector general said it did not find evidence that Strzok and other FBI officials were motivated by political bias.
Strzok was fired in August 2018 and has sued in return. In a statement announcing the book, the publishing company said “the Trump administration used his private expression of political opinions to force him out”.
“But by that time,” the statement added, “Strzok had seen more than enough to convince him that the commander in chief had fallen under the sway of America’s adversary in the Kremlin.”
Though Mueller did not allege a criminal conspiracy between Moscow and the Trump campaign, the publisher said Strzok “grapples with a question that should concern every US citizen: when a president appears to favor personal and Russian interests over those of our nation, has he become a national security threat?”