Strzok Wants His Job Back

As Peter Strzok seeks a court order for his reinstatement to the FBI, we examine his central role in weaponizing a Clinton campaign hoax to take down Trump.

Disgraced FBI agent Peter Strzok, who was summarily fired in 2018 following the release of a series of incriminating text messages, has petitioned a court for reinstatement. Strzok, who served as the FBI’s chief of counterespionage, led the agency's efforts to undermine Trump, initially by launching the fraudulent Crossfire Hurricane investigation and subsequently through a series of actions that included the notorious “insurance policy” against Trump's election and the establishment of a “secret society” after Trump’s win in 2016.

Strzok sued the Department of Justice (DOJ) in 2019 for unlawful termination and violations of his due process and privacy rights. Earlier this year, the DOJ agreed to pay Strzok a settlement of $1.2 million for the privacy claim. However, that amount evidently was not sufficient for Strzok, who is now demanding reinstatement at the FBI in a “nonsupervisory position” and an assurance that he cannot be terminated unless there is “further serious misconduct.” (figure 1)

Figure 1

Strozk's argument for reinstatement is based on the fact that prior to his termination on August 9, 2018, Candace Will, the head of the FBI's Office of Professional Responsibility, had opted to give Strzok a “last chance” by demoting and suspending him instead of terminating his employment outright. However, the FBI's Deputy Director, David Bowdich, disagreed with this decision, leading to Strzok's immediate dismissal. Bowdich articulated this in Strzok's dismissal letter:

“In my 23 years in the FBI, I have not seen a more impactful series of missteps that has called into question the entire organization and more thoroughly damaged the FBI’s reputation.” 

Bowdich cited both the Russia collusion investigation and the Clinton email investigation as reasons for Strzok’s dismissal. It is often overlooked that both Strzok and his FBI colleague and paramour, Lisa Page, who served as counsel to then-Deputy Director Andrew McCabe, were deeply entangled in the “Midyear Exam” investigation of Hillary Clinton’s private email server, as well as the Russia investigation. The FBI ultimately cleared Clinton of wrongdoing, despite her use of a secret server during her tenure as Secretary of State and her deletion of 30,000 government emails, which she claimed were solely related to her daughter's wedding and her yoga classes.

It is sometimes hard to believe, when reflecting on the past, how many significant decisions and misdeeds Strzok was involved in. It’s almost as if he were Forrest Gump’s malevolent little brother, possessing an uncanny ability to appear in all the crucial places at all the pivotal moments.

Strzok was the lead investigator of the Clinton email investigation. It was in this role that, on February 24, 2016, he requested a meeting with former CIA Director Michael Morell, who later became a primary signatory of the fraudulent Hunter Biden laptop letter. Shortly after meeting Strzok, Morell reached out to Clinton's campaign chairman, John Podesta. The details of what Strzok communicated to Morell, as well as what Morell conveyed to Podesta, remain unknown.

However, we do know that Strzok personally conducted the interview with Hillary Clinton on July 2, 2016, which ultimately led to James Comey exonerating her in his now-infamous statement on July 5. In that statement, Comey falsely asserted that no reasonable prosecutor would pursue such a case. Not coincidentally, Strzok’s partner for the July 2 interview was David Laufman, the lead attorney in the DOJ's National Security Division. If that name sounds familiar, it may be because Laufman was the individual who granted Christopher Steele’s notorious primary sub-source, Igor Danchenko, a Get Out of Jail Free card. Danchenko is said to be responsible for 80 percent of the claims in the fraudulent Steele dossier.

On July 28, shortly after overseeing the whitewashing of Clinton’s email scandal, Strzok exchanged text messages with Page regarding their ongoing investigations of “Trump’s Russian connections.” To this day, it remains uncertain what was meant by that, given that there was no official investigation at that time.

The official investigation, known as Crossfire Hurricane, commenced on July 31, supposedly due to a tip received from the Australian Ambassador in London about Trump campaign aide George Papadopoulos. It was Strzok who initiated Crossfire Hurricane. He also traveled to London to speak with the ambassador and later misrepresented the ambassador's statements. The ambassador insisted that there was no suggestion of collusion between the Trump campaign and Russia. However, Strzok, who had opened the investigation before even speaking to the ambassador, forged on regardless.

Strzok soon expanded the investigation from Papadopoulos to include Trump campaign national security advisor General Michael Flynn, Trump campaign manager Paul Manafort, and Trump campaign aide Carter Page. The Australian ambassador had never mentioned any of these individuals.

On August 8, Page texted Strzok about her fear of Trump being elected: “He’s not ever going to become president, right? Right?!” Strzok texted back: “No. No he won’t. We’ll stop it.” A few days later, on August 15, Strzok texted Page about his infamous insurance policy: “there's no way [Trump] gets elected - but I'm afraid we can't take that risk. It's like an insurance policy in the unlikely event you die before you're 40…”

On September 2, Strzok and Page texted each other regarding Comey's request for talking points regarding the Trump investigation. According to Page, Obama wanted to know everything that Strzok’s team was doing. 

A few days later, on September 7, Strzok received a CIA memo confirming that the Trump-Russia collusion narrative was a hoax orchestrated by the Clinton campaign. However, instead of terminating his phony investigation, Strzok chose to intensify it by obtaining a FISA warrant to surveil Trump campaign aide Carter Page. This warrant was largely based on the fraudulent Steele dossier. Steele himself refused to corroborate any of the claims in his dossier, despite being offered $1 million to do so during a meeting with the FBI on October 3, 2016. In January 2017, Steele’s primary sub-source disavowed the dossier. Yet, none of these developments prompted Strzok to end the investigation. He just continued to press on.

On November 9, 2016, the day after Trump's victory, Strzok and Page began strategizing ways to undermine his presidency. It was on this day that they first discussed convening a meeting of their "secret society." This episode remains shrouded in mystery.

Strzok was also deeply involved in the creation of the fraudulent Intelligence Community Assessment (ICA). The ICA, the brainchild of Barack Obama, was a scheme to sabotage Trump by issuing an intelligence community report that would blame Vladimir Putin for Trump’s victory. This narrative could then be used to undermine Trump throughout his presidency, effectively hamstringing him.

In a text message dated December 19, Strzok expressed his desire to include certain “sh*t” in the ICA. The specific content he referred to remains unclear, but it is possible that he was alluding to the Steele dossier, which ultimately was included in the ICA. This inclusion ostensibly legitimized the fraudulent dossier, and not a day would pass over the next four years without media discussion of it.

On January 24, 2017, four days after Trump was sworn in as the 45th president, Strzok struck again. This time, he went to the White House to conduct an ambush interview of Flynn. The investigation into Flynn had already been closed by other FBI agents because there was nothing to pursue. However, after being urged by Obama and then-Vice President Joe Biden, Comey decided to entrap Flynn by sending Strzok to interview him. It would not matter what Flynn said. Even if he told the truth, the interview would simply serve as a basis for getting him fired and charging him with lying about his interactions with the Russian ambassador. Specifically, it was alleged that Flynn had discussed sanctions and then lied about it, but transcripts that were belatedly released in 2020 proved that Flynn never even mentioned sanctions.

When Flynn was brought before a Washington, D.C. judge, who had supposedly been randomly assigned, that judge was Rudolph Contreras. Unbeknownst to Flynn, Contreras was a friend of Strzok’s. Incredibly, Contreras did not recuse himself from the case, as was his duty. The truth was uncovered in 2018 when text messages revealed that Strzok and Page had discussed Strzok’s personal friendship with Contreras and their hope that he would not recuse himself from cases involving Strzok. Contreras was finally forced to recuse himself, but only after Flynn had already been coerced into pleading guilty to an offense he did not commit.

In the early hours of May 19, 2017, a day after Robert Mueller was appointed as special counsel to investigate imaginary Trump-Russia collusion, Strzok texted Page to say that there was no there there. However, this did not deter Strzok from joining Mueller’s team in his pursuit of Trump. It was only after his text messages were made public that Strzok was removed from Mueller’s team.

It took another year for Strzok to finally be fired, and now, here we are, six and a half years later, with Strzok having already received a substantial payout and attempting to be reemployed by the FBI. While we cannot ascertain his motivations—other than to say that they are beyond outrageous—the most likely scenario is that Strzok does not actually want his old job back. Rather, he seeks reinstatement as a form of implicit exoneration.

This entire episode underscores the necessity for the incoming Trump administration to revisit the Strzok case, aiming to understand why Biden’s Department of Justice granted him a payout in the first place and to uncover the many missing pieces of the puzzle. For instance, there is a significant period for which Strzok’s text messages were never released. Curiously, this period begins with Trump’s inauguration in January 2017 and extends into Strzok’s appointment to join the Mueller team in May 2017. This is the critical timeframe in which the Russia collusion narrative was weaponized, transforming from a Clinton campaign smear into a full-blown federal government plot to take down a sitting president.