Let's Revisit Peter Strzok

I was poking around the other day, and I discovered a remarkable item about Peter Strzok, the former high-level FBI official who is best known for his affair with Lisa Page, who at the time was an FBI attorney:

A career employee with the FBI for 22 years before his firing in August 2018, Strzok had been a lead agent in the FBI's "Operation Ghost Stories" against Andrey Bezrukov and Yelena Vavilova, a Russian spy couple who were part of the Illegals Program, a network of Russian sleeper agents who were arrested in 2010. By July 2015, he was serving as the section chief of the Counterespionage Section, a subordinate section of the FBI's Counterintelligence Division.

. . . Strzok rose to the rank of Deputy Assistant Director in the Counterintelligence Division and was the number two official within that division for investigations involving Russia. In that capacity, he led the FBI's investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 United States elections, and examined both the Steele dossier and the Russian role in the 2016 Democratic National Committee email leak. He oversaw the bureau's interviews with then-National Security Advisor Michael Flynn; Flynn later pled guilty to lying during those interviews.

In July 2017, Strzok became the most senior FBI agent working for Robert Mueller's 2017 Special Counsel investigation looking into any links or coordination between Trump's presidential campaign and the Russian government. He served in that position until August 2017, at which time he was moved to the Human Resources Branch. According to The New York Times, Strzok was "considered one of the most experienced and trusted FBI counterintelligence investigators," as well as "one of the Bureau's top experts on Russia" according to CNN.

In other words, although the affair with Page has tended to give him a less-than-serious aura, he was the major player in the FBI's Russian counterintelligence role, a trusted deep state heavyweight. Elsewhere in the Wikipedia link,

Strzok led a team of a dozen investigators during the FBI's investigation into Hillary Clinton's use of a personal email server and assisted in the drafting of public statements for then-FBI Director James Comey. He changed the description of Clinton's actions from "grossly negligent", which could be a criminal offense, to "extremely careless". . . . In his statement to Congress, Comey said that "no reasonable prosecutor" would bring charges based on available evidence. Later, when additional emails were discovered a few days before the election, Strzok reportedly supported reopening the Clinton investigation. He then co-wrote the letter which Comey used to inform Congress, which "reignited the email controversy in the final days" and "played a key role in a controversial FBI decision that upended Hillary Clinton's campaign."

So Strzok was apparently Comey's go-to guy for all the sensitive topics that came up during the 2016 campaign and subsequent Trump transition. If Comey was the hand, Strzok was the glove, or maybe it was the other way around -- but that included the bungling over reopening the Clinton e-mail invesigation in late October and early November that distracted attention from Trump's Access Hollywood tape and may well have cost Hllary the election. Strzok seems to have been closely involved, to the point of drafting the specific words Comey spoke, in every public controversy surrounding Comey from summer 2016 to Comey's firing in May 2017.

The more I look at Comey, the more I think he was and is an erratic and unstable guy. Recall that the intelligence estimate I discussed in yesterday's post assessed that Comey leaned Republican and "intends to prolong the [Clinton e-mail] investigation so that the scandal would keep going until the presidential election to jeapordize the chances of the DP to win the presidential race". But by July 5, he and Sttzok had issued the "no reasonable prosecutor" statement, except by Octoher, he and Strzok decided to reopen the investigation, except by November 6, they said, "never mind".

Let's also recall from yesterday's post that by January 6, 2017, Comey had by his own account resolved that Trump was a suspicious enough actor that he began an unprecedented practice of making detailed notes of his meetings with Trump immediately after they ended -- this after Trump at that January 6 meeting apparently suggested (with firsthand knowledge) that the Steele dossier was pure fantasy. Comey nonetheless seems to have begun then to worry about using the 25th Amendment, when he must certainly have known there was no substance to the Steele dossier and no confirmation of any Russian influence in the Trump camp. Strange guy.

And indeed Strzok, the deep state heavyweight who was Comey's close adviser, nonetheless was never a believer in the Steele dossier:

To date, Lisa Page’s infamy has been driven mostly by the anti-Donald Trump text messages she exchanged with fellow FBI agent Peter Strzok as the two engaged in an affair while investigating the president for alleged election collusion with Russia.

. . . Rather, it might be eight simple words she uttered behind closed doors during a congressional interview a few weeks ago [August 2018].

“It’s a reflection of us still not knowing,” Page told Rep. John Ratcliffe (R-Texas) when questioned about texts she and Strzok exchanged in May 2017 as Robert Mueller was being named special counsel to take over the Russia investigation.

With that statement, Page acknowledged a momentous fact: After nine months of using some of the most awesome surveillance powers afforded to U.S. intelligence, the FBI still had not made a case connecting Trump or his campaign to Russia’s election meddling.

Page opined further, acknowledging “it still existed in the scope of possibility that there would be literally nothing” to connect Trump and Russia, no matter what Mueller or the FBI did.

“As far as May of 2017, we still couldn’t answer the question,” she said at another point.

After reviewing other statements by Comey, Strzok, and Page, the writer, John Solomon asked (in September 2018),

Which raises the question: If there was no concrete evidence of collusion, why did we need a special counsel [Robert Mueller]?

Page’s comments also mean FBI and Justice officials likely leaked a barrage of media stories just before and after Mueller’s appointment that made the evidence of collusion look far stronger than the frontline investigators knew it to be. Text messages show contacts between key FBI and DOJ players and The Washington Post, The Associated Press and The New York Times during the ramp-up to Mueller’s probe.

What's beginning to emerge is a plot that began in summer 2016 to use allegations of Russian influence in the Trump campaign to distract attention from Hillary Clinton's off-site e-mail server. The FBI, which apparently was never confident in the truth of the Russian allegations, was somnehow dragooned into supporting them, quite possibly following the Bill Clinton-Loretta Lynch tarmac meeting at the Phoenix airport on June 27, 2016, which I'll talk about in greater detail tomorrow.