Peter Strzok sues over firing for anti-Trump textsThe former FBI agent who opened the bureau’s Russia probe says the government violated his First and Fifth Amendment rights.NATASHA BERTRAND
08/06/2019 02:22 PM EDT
Peter Strzok, the former FBI agent who opened the bureau’s Russia probe in 2016 and later became a symbol of alleged “deep state” animus for Donald Trump, is suing the government over his firing.
In a lawsuit filed on Tuesday, Strzok excoriates the Justice Department and FBI for their handling of his dismissal over a trove of text messages he wrote to a colleague that were critical of Trump. Strzok accuses the president of inappropriately bullying law enforcement officials deciding his fate, raises questions about why his texts were leaked to the media and lambastes the administration for only defending its employees’ free speech rights when they are praising Trump.
Specifically, Strzok’s lawsuit accuses the agencies of violating his First and Fifth Amendment rights by firing him over the texts and then depriving him of due process to challenge his expulsion. And, Strzok argues, DOJ’s decision to give the incendiary messages to reporters before handing them to Congress — generating blaring headlines — was “deliberate and unlawful,” a violation of the Privacy Act.
The Justice Department and FBI did not immediately comment.
Strzok became a lightning rod for efforts to undermine the Russia investigation when the texts he wrote to FBI lawyer Lisa Page — using his FBI-issued phone — were publicly released in December 2017.
DOJ has not disclosed who authorized the release of the text messages, which were under investigation at the time by Inspector General Michael Horowitz. Strzok’s legal team said in the filing that it hopes to learn that in discovery.
Many of the texts were overtly critical of Trump, and Strzok and Page, who were having an affair, mocked him at various points throughout the campaign, calling him an "idiot."
At the time, both Strzok and Page were working on the investigation into Russia’s election interference. They had also previously worked on the probe into Hillary Clinton’s use of a private email server, and Strzok would later join special counsel Robert Mueller’s team.
In the texts, Strzok and Page disparaged other political leaders, like Democratic candidate Bernie Sanders and former Attorney General Eric Holder. But Mueller’s most vehement critics quickly weaponized the texts about Trump, seeking to portray Strzok as a symbol of an agency hopelessly tainted by bias against Trump.
An Inspector General report released last year, however, found no evidence that the officials’ political opinions impacted their investigative actions with regard to the Clinton email investigation. A separate IG report due to be released this fall is expected to address the agents’ conduct during the Russia probe.
Trump has tweeted about Strzok nearly two-dozen times since January 2018, calling him a “sick loser,” “a fraud,” “incompetent,” “corrupt,” and praising his firing from the FBI. Trump even accused Strzok of “treason” and told reporters in June 2018 that he was “amazed” Strzok was still employed at the FBI. “Peter Strzok should have been fired a long time ago,” Trump said.
Donald J. Trump
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@realDonaldTrump
The IG Report totally destroys James Comey and all of his minions including the great lovers, Peter Strzok and Lisa Page, who started the disgraceful Witch Hunt against so many innocent people. It will go down as a dark and dangerous period in American History!
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Trump’s public invective drove the government’s decision to terminate Strzok, the lawsuit argues.
The move, it says, “was the result of unrelenting pressure from President Trump and his political allies in Congress and the media,” noting that FBI Deputy Director David Bowdich made the move over a recommendation from the FBI’s Office of Professional Responsibility, which only suggested a demotion and short suspension.
According to the court document, Strzok says Bowdich initially reassured him that the public disclosure of the texts would not impact his career. But in a dismissal letter dated Aug. 9, 2018, Bowdich claimed that the 22-year FBI veteran had undermined “the credibility of the FBI” with his text messages and exercised bad judgment in using an FBI device to send the texts.
Questions have since been raised about what specific bureau policies Strzok violated in sending the messages.
In an internal report, Candice Will, the longtime deputy director of the FBI’s Office of Professional Responsibility, cited three ways in which Strzok allegedly violated FBI policies during the election, according to a person with direct knowledge of the matter. None had to do with the content of the text messages, though the office did note that the “overtly political tone” of the messages was “of serious concern.”
The first, “unprofessional conduct off duty,” directly related to his use of an FBI-issued cell phone to send the private texts. The second, “investigative deficiency” — later reduced to “dereliction of supervisory duty” — related to Strzok’s perceived delay in searching a laptop that belonged to Anthony Weiner, the husband of a top Hillary Clinton aide, as part of the probe of Clinton’s emails in the fall of 2016.
Finally, Will told Strzok that he had committed a “security violation” for forwarding certain sensitive law-enforcement documents to his personal Gmail account.
Still, Will and her office did not recommend Strzok’s dismissal. And legal experts said Bowdich’s eventual decision to overrule that recommendation was considered highly unusual.
Strzok’s lawsuit notes that while the Hatch Act prohibits certain political activities by government officials, officials should also “be encouraged to exercise” their right to political speech “fully, freely, and without fear of penalty or reprisal.” And because the FBI never asserted that Strzok violated the Hatch Act, Strzok’s speech was protected under the First Amendment, the lawsuit states.
The Trump administration has also exhibited a double standard when it comes to tolerating political speech from employees, the document argues. It specifically mentions Kellyanne Conway, the president’s senior adviser whose repeated Hatch Act violations prompted the Office of Special Counsel to recommend she be fired.
The administration, according to the lawsuit, “has consistently tolerated and even encouraged partisan political speech by federal employees, as long as this speech praises President Trump and attacks his political adversaries.”
The FBI has similarly shown that it is willing to punish those critical of Trump, like Strzok, while taking “no actions” against agents who opposed Clinton in 2016, the suit says. An Inspector General report released last year outlined concerns within the department that FBI officials might leak information about the election-year email probe to the press in order to damage her political standing.
Strzok’s lawsuit will likely reignite a long-running debate over his actions and potential FBI bias.
In congressional testimony last year, Strzok said he is “deeply regretful for those texts.” But he argued at the hearing — a point reiterated in his lawsuit — that if had truly wanted to sabotage Trump’s candidacy, he would have leaked the existence of the Russia investigation during the investigation.
“There is an expectation that those are not going to be made public,” he said of the texts. “I had no idea that this was going to happen and, darn, if I knew it, I never would have done it for sure.”
https://www.politico.com/story/2019/08/ ... ts-1448615 
