Thompson: Strzok and the limits of the GOP’s curiosity

Peter Strzok, the FBI agent who has become a poster-child of Republicans’ and Trump allies’ conspiracy theory of a “Deep State” plot against the president, was subpoenaed last week to appear before the House Judiciary Committee, though he’d already volunteered to testify.
The hearing was scheduled for Wednesday.
Strzok, who was a part of both the Hillary Clinton email investigation and for a time the investigation into possible ties between Russia and the Trump campaign regarding Russian efforts to influence the election toward Trump, has come under fire for a number of texts he exchanged with fellow FBI official Lisa Page — with whom he was having an affair — that were strongly anti-Trump.
One exchange in particular has stoked the flames recently.
“(Trump’s) not ever going to become president, right? Right?!” Page wrote to Strzok.
“No. No he’s not. We’ll stop it,” Strzok replied.
This exchange was highlighted by Justice Department Inspector General Michael Horowitz in a report that covered the FBI’s actions over the course of the Clinton investigation and which was released to the public earlier this month.
The report characterized the texts as “indicative of a biased state of mind but, even more seriously, implies a willingness to take official action to impact the presidential candidate’s electoral prospects. …This is antithetical to the core values of the FBI and the Department of Justice.”
But consider these things. Trump won the election, so nothing was obviously ever done to “stop it.” Along with that, believers in an anti-Trump conspiracy theory have failed to ever explain why the FBI would keep an investigation about him under wraps while they were ready to blab on about the investigation into the conduct of his opponent, who they supposedly were in the bag for. And finally, Horowitz’s report said no evidence was found that personal feelings about Trump influenced any investigative decisions in the Clinton and Trump matters.
Republicans have latched on to Horowitz’s statement that he couldn’t be sure Strzok didn’t prioritize the Trump investigation over the Clinton one, which I suppose should provoke concern if you really believe an investigation into misuse of classified information is on an equal plane with possible quid-pro-quo coordination with a foreign adversary to swing an election.
But Trump and his allies in Congress would like us to believe that. And those congressmen are ready to harangue Strzok and — dissatisfied with Horowitz’s conclusion that there’s no evidence to suggest political bias in any investigative decisions — are ready to launch an investigation into the investigation of the investigation.
That’s because they can’t accept the notion that Hillary Clinton is anything less than a criminal, and at the same time they’re terrified of what Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation into Trump campaign-Russia collusion and Trump’s possible obstruction of justice has revealed and will reveal. So it’s best to keep throwing up smoke.
But as they stand ready to hammer Strzok over his bias, one has to wonder why they lack the curiosity to ask more about FBI officials’ concerns that a group of agents in the bureau’s New York office were leaking information left and right in a possible effort to assure Clinton wouldn’t win.
Horowitz confirmed he is examining this as part of a separate report he plans to issue. But we don’t exactly see Trey Gowdy and Bob Goodlatte beating down the doors and demanding answers.
Previous reporting has indicated there were agents in the New York office during 2016 who carried strong disdain for Clinton. On Sept. 26, 2016, investigators in that office acquired the laptop of former Congressman Anthony Weiner, the husband of Clinton aide Huma Abedin. On that laptop, they found thousands of emails to and from Clinton.
Before going through the emails, those agents apparently alerted Rep. Devin Nunes, Trump lackey and chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, to their existence. And even though an examination of the emails eventually revealed no criminal wrongdoing, that didn’t stop Nunes from recently describing the agents as “whistleblowers,” with no regard for the actual definition of the word.
So, when are House Republicans going to ask why this information was given to Nunes and why Nunes didn’t inform the ranking Democrat on the committee, Rep. Adam Schiff, of the agents’ outreach?
And then there’s the matter of Rudy Giuliani, who apparently was being fed information by New York field office agents about the Clinton investigation and who went on Fox News on Oct. 25, 2016 to promise an October surprise. Three days later, then-FBI director James Comey announced the bureau had reopened the Clinton email investigation.
The IG report dinged Comey for a number of things, but especially that decision. It cannot be disputed that Comey’s announcement days before the election significantly hurt the chances of Clinton, the candidate Trump and those floating a Deep State operation would have us believe the FBI was plotting with and/or for, all the while staying mum on the Trump investigation.
Judging by the IG report, the fears of leaks from anti-Trump agents seem to have prompted Comey to break from protocol and make the Clinton announcement and suggests a possible blackmail effort on the part of those agents. Horowitz’s subsequent report hopefully will clean up some of these questions that need answering about whether there was a coordinated effort among agents to sway the election away from Clinton and who else might have been a part of it.
And, if there was such an effort, surely, we’ll see the likes of Gowdy, Goodlatte, Jim Jiordan, Mark Meadows and on down the list demand the agents’ identities be disclosed. And surely, we’ll see them demand that any and all personal communications between those agents be disclosed.
Right?
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Scott Thompson is editor of the Barrow News-Journal. He can be reached at sthompson@barrownewsjournal.com.