Why is the GOP hiding testimony of FBI’s Strzok?
It’s time for the country to hear from FBI agent Peter Strzok.
The Justice Department inspector general’s report on the FBI’s handling of the Clinton email investigation criticized Strzok, who worked on that investigation and also on the FBI probe of Russian interference with the 2016 election. The report said Strzok muddied the credibility of the Clinton case by exchanging antiTrump text messages with his girlfriend, then-FBI attorney Lisa Page. He testified in a closed session before the House Oversight and Judiciary committees on Wednesday.
The president and his supporters argue that Strzok’s early involvement in the Russia probe taints the entire investigation. On Thursday President Donald Trump tweeted that Strzok “was given poor marks on yesterday’s closed-door testimony” and that Strzok’s role in the Russia investigation was further evidence of the “witch hunt” against him. But although the president had called for Strzok’s testimony to be public, Congress did not agree.
Strzok certainly doesn’t act like someone with anything to hide. He offered to testify publicly and without a subpoena. He didn’t take the Fifth or demand immunity. Unlike the president in his dealings with special counsel Robert Mueller III, Strzok did not haggle for months over the terms or scope of an interview. Nevertheless, Congress first threatened to subpoena him unnecessarily and then chose to keep his testimony under wraps.
Strzok is on the hot seat primarily based on a few dozen text messages out of more than 40,000 that he and Page exchanged on FBI devices. In the most widely reported exchange, Page texted that Trump’s “not ever going to become president, right? Right?!” and Strzok responded, “No. No he won’t. We’ll stop it.”
Most have assumed that “we” means the FBI. But it’s at least as likely that Strzok, in a personal message to his girlfriend, was referring to we the voters, or we the American people. That would have been an unremarkable sentiment shared by about half the people in the country, who could not believe that Trump would ever be elected. It’s quite a leap to go from that text message to a claim that Strzok tried to use his official powers to tip the election.
And there’s no evidence that he did. The inspector general concluded the text messages suggested possible bias and “cast a cloud” over the FBI. But the IG also found no evidence that “these political views directly affected the specific investigative decisions that we reviewed.” The problems found by the IG were problems of appearance, not substance.
But maybe, despite his exhaustive investigation, the IG got it wrong. Maybe Strzok really was part of a “deep state” conspiracy to take down Trump, even though everything the FBI did during the email investigation actually ended up hurting his opponent. Maybe that same conspiracy now infects Mueller’s probe. If that’s the fear, what’s the argument for keeping Strzok’s testimony secret?
Strzok’s text messaging habits, however imprudent, have nothing to do with the merits of the Mueller investigation. Keeping his testimony secret leads only to selective leaks, spin and speculation. Let’s hear what he said.