newyorker | On Monday, in an account of the
F.B.I.’s firing of Peter Strzok—the senior agent who led the Bureau’s
2016 investigations of Hillary Clinton e-mails and Trump-Russia
connections—the Times reported that the move “was not unexpected.” Given the inflamed political climate in Washington, that is an accurate statement.
The
special counsel, Robert Mueller, removed Strzok from the Russia
investigation last year, after it was discovered that he had sharply
criticized Donald Trump,
who was then running for President, in private text messages with Lisa
Page, another F.B.I. employee, with whom Strzok was having an affair.
Earlier this summer, a report from the Justice Department’s inspector
general, Michael Horowitz, said
that Strzok’s text messages to Page “potentially indicated or created
the appearance that investigative decisions were impacted by bias or
improper considerations.” Since then, President Trump has been attacking
Strzok regularly on Twitter. Last month, Strzok testified at a public
hearing on Capitol Hill, where congressional Republicans tore into him.
At one point, Rudy Giuliani, Trump’s lawyer, called for Strzok to be jailed.
But,
despite all the noise and fury, there is now a basic question that
needs an answer: Why was Strzok fired? Before the Clinton and Trump
investigations, Strzok had racked up twenty years of distinguished
service in the Bureau, rising to the position of deputy assistant
director of the Counterintelligence Division.
Since his
communications with Page have become public, Strzok has insisted that
his personal views about Trump didn’t affect his actions while
overseeing the Clinton and Russia investigations. During his testimony
on Capitol Hill, he insisted
that when, in the course of discussing Trump’s Presidential bid with
Page, he wrote to her that “we will stop it” he was referring to the
American public at large.
