Peter Strzok has written a book due out in September in which the fired FBI special agent will argue that President Trump has been “compromised” by Russia.
Strzok’s 384-page book, titled Compromised: Counterintelligence and the Threat of Donald Trump, is set to be released on Sept. 8 by publisher Houghton Mifflin Harcourt less than two months before the November election. The controversial bureau agent, whose affair with FBI lawyer Lisa Page, anti-Trump texts, and key role in launching the Trump-Russia investigation in 2016 all earned him the ire of the president and his Republican allies, plans to emphasize allegations of Russian collusion that have come increasingly into doubt with recent document disclosures.
“The FBI veteran behind the Russia investigation draws on decades of experience hunting foreign agents in the United States to lay bare the threat posed by President Trump,” Strzok’s publisher said. “When he opened the FBI investigation into Russia’s election interference, Peter Strzok had already spent more than two decades defending the United States against foreign threats. His career in counterintelligence ended shortly thereafter, when the Trump administration used his private expression of political opinions to force him out of the Bureau in August 2018. But by that time, Strzok had seen more than enough to convince him that the commander in chief had fallen under the sway of America’s adversary in the Kremlin.”
The publisher added: “Strzok … grapples with a question that should concern every U.S. citizen: When a president appears to favor personal and Russian interests over those of our nation, has he become a national security threat?”
DOJ Inspector General Michael Horowitz’s lengthy December report criticized the Justic Department and the FBI for at least 17 “significant errors and omissions” related to the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act warrants against Trump campaign associate Carter Page and for the bureau’s reliance on British ex-spy Christopher Steele’s Democrat-funded and unverified dossier. Declassified footnotes showed that the FBI was aware that Steele’s dossier may have been compromised by Russian disinformation.
A declassified document released earlier in July contained Strzok’s typed comments critiquing the assertions made in a New York Times article from February 2017 titled “Trump Campaign Aides Had Repeated Contacts With Russian Intelligence.” Strzok apparently referenced the January 2017 conversation with Steele’s primary subsource and wrote that “recent interviews and investigation, however, reveal Steele may not be in a position to judge the reliability of his sub-source network.”
The notes by Strzok also appear to cut against the FBI’s assertion in FISA application filings that “the FBI believes that Russia’s efforts to influence U.S. policy were likely being coordinated between the [Russian Intelligence Services] and Carter Page, and possibly others.” Strzok’s notes said, “We are unaware of ANY Trump advisers engaging in conversations with Russian intelligence officials.”
“The comments of Peter Strzok regarding the Feb. 14 New York Times article are devastating in that they are an admission that there was no reliable evidence that anyone from the Trump campaign was working with Russian Intelligence Agencies in any form,” Senate Judiciary Chairman Lindsey Graham said. “The statements by Mr. Strzok question the entire premise of the FBI’s investigation of the Trump campaign and make it even more outrageous that the Mueller team continued this investigation for almost two and a half years.”
Strzok’s August 2019 lawsuit against the Justice Department alleged that “the concerted public campaign to disparage and, ultimately, fire” him was enabled by a “deliberate and unlawful disclosure to the media” of his texts.
The DOJ responded that Strzok’s dozens of pro-Clinton and anti-Trump texts “cast a pall over the FBI’s Clinton email and Russia investigations and the work of the special counsel.” Strzok was removed from Robert Mueller’s special counsel team in 2017 because of the texts.
New questions about Strzok’s conduct have been raised following the release of previously concealed FBI records from the case against retired Lt. Gen. Michael Flynn.
Documents declassified this year indicate that Strzok abruptly stopped the FBI from closing its investigation into Flynn in early January 2017 at the insistence of the FBI’s “seventh floor” after the bureau had uncovered “no derogatory information” on Flynn. Emails showed Strzok and Page sought to continue investigating Flynn, even considering the Logan Act.
Other FBI documents showed that the counterintelligence briefing FBI agent Joseph Pientka gave to Trump during the 2016 campaign was used as a pretext to gather investigative evidence on the Trump campaign and Flynn. Pientka and Strzok interviewed Flynn at FBI Director James Comey’s behest in January 2017.
“Russia has long regarded the United States as its Main Enemy,” Strzok said in a Tuesday statement, adding, “The elevation by President Trump and his collaborators of Trump’s own personal interests over the interests of the country allowed Putin to succeed beyond Stalin’s wildest dreams.”
Mueller concluded that Russia interfered in 2016 in a “sweeping and systematic fashion” but “did not establish” any criminal conspiracy between the Russians and the Trump campaign. Recently declassified House Intelligence Committee witness transcripts showed top Obama national security officials testified that they did not see any direct evidence of Trump-Russia collusion.
U.S. Attorney John Durham was appointed by Barr last year to investigate the Trump-Russia investigators. Strzok is being scrutinized as part of that inquiry.
