8/13/2018

2016 ELECTION/FBI/HILLARY CLINTON/RUSSIA INVESTIGATION/TRUMP AS PRESIDENT: “Peter Strzok, the F.B.I. senior counterintelligence agent who disparaged President Trump in inflammatory text messages and helped oversee the Hillary Clinton email and Russia investigations, has been fired for violating bureau policies, Mr. Strzok’s lawyer said Monday [8-13-18]. Mr. Trump and his allies seized on the text messages — exchanged during the 2016 campaign with a former F.B.I. lawyer, Lisa Page — in assailing the Russia investigation as an illegitimate ‘witch hunt.’ Mr. Strzok, who rose over 20 years at the F.B.I. to become one of its most experienced counterintelligence agents, was a key figure in the early months of the inquiry. Along with writing the text messages, Mr. Strzok was accused of sending a highly sensitive search warrant to his personal email account. The F.B.I. had been under immense political pressure by Mr. Trump to dismiss Mr. Strzok. The president again tweeted about Mr. Strzok on Monday. In June, Mr. Strzok’s conduct was laid out in a wide-ranging inspector general’s report on how the F.B.I. handled the investigation of Hillary Clinton’s emails in the run up to the 2016 election. The report was critical of Mr. Strzok’s conduct in sending the texts, and the bureau’s Office of Professional Responsibility said that Mr. Strzok should be suspended for 60 days and demoted. Mr. Strzok had testified before the House in July about how he had not allowed his political views to interfere with the investigations he was overseeing.”

Adam Goldman and Michael S. Schmidt, “F.B.I. Agent Peter Strzok, Who Criticized Trump in Texts, Is Fired,” The New York Times online, August 13, 2018