Let's Take Another Look At Peter Strzok

Information about Peter Strzok, best known for his thousands of e-mails to his FBI office girlfriend Lisa Page, has come out piecemeal over the years, with little overall context. The e-mails and texts in many ways make Strzok look like a comical figure -- as a radio host put it at the time, "Imagine being in junior high school with a name like Strzok."

Among the most controversial of the texts was Strzok's response to Page's query asking if Trump could be elected. To which Strzok replied, "No, we'll stop it."

. . . During the texts with Strzok, Page also said, Hillary Clinton "just has to win now," and "This man cannot be president."

The texts were made public in December 2017, and resulted in both Strzok and Page being removed from their posts as part of then-special counsel Robert Mueller's investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 election. Strzok was eventually fired by the FBI, while Page left her position in May 2018.

In fact, Strzok's Wikipedia entry suggests Trump's suspicions of Strzok were a conspiracy theory:

News of the text messages led Trump, Republican congressmen and right-wing media to speculate that Strzok participated in a conspiracy to undermine the Trump presidency.

But as they say, just because you're paranoid doesn't mean they aren't out to get you. In yesterday's post, I linked to a 2020 Politico story that described an otherwise unremarked Oval Office meeting on January 5, 2021. Obama and Biden, with a little over two weeks to go before Trump came in, were meeting with FBI Director Comey on the path forward. But who should be there with Comey to take notes but Peter Strzok? This if nothing else suggests that Comey had a great deal of trust in Strzok's absolute discretion.

The first mention of Strzok working with Comey in Strzok's Wikipedia entry is in the context of the FBI investigation into Hillary Clinton's e-mail server. Strzok had been with the FBI since 1996, while Comey was appointed FBI Director by Barack Obama in 2013.

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". The draft was reviewed and corrected by several people and its creation was a team process. 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."

But not only was Strzok serving as Comey's catspaw in the Clinton e-mail investigation, he was the agent who singlehandedly started the Crossfire Hurricane investigation in July 2016:

To the untrained eye, the FBI document that launched Crossfire Hurricane can be confusing, and it may be difficult to discern how it might be inadequate. To the trained eye, however, it is a train wreck. There are a number of reasons why it is so bad. Two main ones are offered below. . . :

First, the document is oddly constructed. In a normal, legitimate FBI Electronic Communication, or EC, there would be a “To” and a “From” line. The Crossfire Hurricane EC has only a “From” line; it is from a part of the FBI’s Counterintelligence Division whose contact is listed as Peter Strzok. The EC was drafted also by Peter Strzok. And, finally, it was approved by Peter Strzok. Essentially, it is a document created by Peter Strzok, approved by Peter Strzok, and sent from Peter Strzok to Peter Strzok.

On that basis alone, the document is an absurdity, violative of all FBI protocols and, therefore, invalid on its face. An agent cannot approve his or her own case; that would make a mockery of the oversight designed to protect Americans. Yet, for this document, Peter Strzok was pitcher, catcher, batter and umpire.

In addition, several names are listed in a “cc” or copy line; all are redacted, save Strzok’s, who, for some reason, felt it necessary to copy himself on a document he sent from himself to himself.

Names on an FBI document are always listed in cascading fashion, with the most senior at the top and on down to the least senior. On this EC, Strzok is listed last, so the redacted names should be more senior to him. Those names could well include then-FBI Director James Comey, then-Deputy Director Andrew McCabe and then-Counterintelligence Assistant Director Bill Priestap. The document also establishes these redacted names as “case participants.”

It's hard to avoid thinking Strzok was doing Comey's bidding in this, in addition to the Hillary Clinton e-mail investigation. The first phase of the e-mail investigation ran from May to July 2016, ending with Comey's ghostwritten "no reasonable prosecutor" statement Strzok wrote for him. Yet by July, Strzok was also the key actor who initiated Crossfire Hurricane. When more Hillary classified e-mails surfaced in October, Strzok was again on that job.

Nevertheless, throughout this period, Strzok was exchanging thousands of e-mails with Lisa Page on the FBI system. It's hard to imagine how Strzok found time for the political side of his job, but he clearly did. According to Wikipedia,

From late July to November 2016, the joint effort between the FBI, the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), and the National Security Agency (NSA) examined evidence of Russian meddling in the presidential election. The FBI's team enjoyed a large degree of autonomy within the broader interagency probe.

"The FBI's team" would basically have been Peter Strzok, as far as I can see, and he would have been communicating regularly with Comey and the other FBI chiefs. So with a short break for the holidays, he's in the Oval Office on January 5 talking about using the Logan Act against General Michael Flynn. Strzok's Wikipedia entry says, "He oversaw the bureau's interviews with then-National Security Advisor Michael Flynn; Flynn later pled guilty to lying during those interviews."

There was a series of meetings between Trump and Comey from February 2017 to Trump's firing of Comey as FBI Director in May, in which Trump repeatedly inquired about the investigations of Flynn, Crossfire Hurricane, and other matters. It's hard to avoid thinking that Strzok was closely apprised of all these.

Following Trump's firing of Comey in May,

The Robert Mueller special counsel investigation was an investigation into 45th U.S. president Donald Trump regarding Russian interference in the 2016 United States elections and was conducted by special prosecutor Robert Mueller from May 2017 to March 2019.

. . . The dismissal of James Comey was a factor in the decision to use a Special Counsel. The Mueller investigation took over the FBI's investigation, Crossfire Hurricane. The Mueller investigation's scope included allegations of "links and/or coordination" between the Russian government and individuals associated with the Trump campaign.

But then, remarkably, via Strzok's Wikipedia entry,

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.

. . . Strzok left the investigation in late July 2017 after the discovery of personal text messages sent to Lisa Page, an FBI lawyer, during the 2016 election campaign, which criticized Trump and said he would "stop" Trump.

Strzok stayed with the FBI for another year in what the Japanese call a "window seat", but it appears that he was removed from direct involvement in anti-Trump skulduggery in July 2017. I suspect that there's a great deal more that Trump already knows, and probably more than that he has still to learn. I have a feeling more will come out in the near future.