The Biden Justice Department has blocked a subpoena to depose former President Donald Trump sent by Peter Strzok, who sued the FBI for wrongful termination after the emergence of his anti-Trump texts.
Strzok filed a civil lawsuit against then-Attorney General William Barr, FBI Director Chris Wray, and the bureau in August 2019, claiming he was wrongfully terminated in 2018 after the discovery of anti-Trump texts with former FBI lawyer Lisa Page, with whom he was romantically involved. He played a key role in opening the Crossfire Hurricane investigation in 2016 and interviewed retired Lt. Gen. Michael Flynn in January 2017.
The Biden Justice Department is fighting his efforts to force Trump into a deposition.
“Because former President Trump did not remove Mr. Strzok and did not release the text messages at issue in this case, there is no need to probe the former President’s intentions,” the Biden DOJ wrote. “Even if former President Trump aspired to tarnish Mr. Strzok’s reputation and to induce his separation from the FBI, it would matter only if the decision maker shared or sought to further that aspiration.”
The Monday filing was signed by Deputy Assistant Attorney General Brian Netter and others, and it said that the legal standard for deposing high-ranking government officials is if the potential witness “has personal knowledge of relevant and necessary information that cannot be obtained elsewhere” — and argued that “no such circumstances are present.”
The Justice Department lawyers said it is “settled” that the decision to fire Strzok from the FBI was made by then-Deputy Director David Bowdich, not by Trump. The DOJ attorneys wrote: “Mr. Strzok is free to depose Mr. Bowdich and the other FBI officials who were involved in the removal decision. But on the current record, Mr. Strzok offers nothing — no documents and no testimony — to support a finding that the former President possesses unique knowledge of relevant facts.”
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The Biden DOJ said Strzok’s assertions that the FBI must have fired him because of a pressure campaign by Trump “find no support in the factual record, including the tens of thousands of pages already produced thus far,” and “ignore the events leading up to Mr. Bowdich’s removal decision,” citing special counsel Robert Mueller’s decision to reassign Strzok upon learning of his anti-Trump texts, DOJ Inspector General Michael Horowitz referring Strzok to the FBI for discipline, career FBI Office of Professional Responsibility unit head Jessica Loreto recommending that Strzok be removed, and OPR Assistant Director Candice Will finding that “the nature and scope of his misconduct certainly warrants dismissal.”
The Justice Department said Strzok hadn’t made notice of deposing Loreto or Will yet and hadn’t yet deposed Bowdich despite serving him with a subpoena in late 2021, and it added that Strzok “has made no showing that former President Trump was involved in those officials’ decision-making process in any way.”
Strzok claimed in his lawsuit that his firing was “the result of unrelenting pressure from President Trump and his political allies in Congress and the media” and condemned what he called the “deliberate and unlawful disclosure to the media” of his texts.
His lawyers had claimed in March that “the deposition of former President Trump is warranted, appropriate, and necessary.” The filing was signed by attorneys Aitan Goelman and Richard Salzman, who contended that Strzok was “improperly fired by the FBI under unprecedented and highly suspicious circumstances.”
“Mr. Trump demanded the firing of Peter Strzok before the FBI imposed discipline, and he has repeatedly taken credit for Strzok’s firing since. Based on his own public confessions, the former president has implicated himself in the firing of Special Agent Strzok,” Strzok’s lawyers asserted.
Strzok’s initial lawsuit claimed Trump played a role in his firing by pressuring Wray and then-Attorney General Jeff Sessions to fire him.
But the Justice Department pointed out in January that future discovery in Strzok’s lawsuit “may reveal, for example, that even if the officials directly responsible for Mr. Strzok’s firing were aware of communications from then-President Trump, they were not influenced by those communications.”
The DOJ recommended in January that the court “quash the subpoena” calling Trump to testify.
Trump celebrated Strzok’s firing in August 2018.
“Just fired Agent Strzok, formerly of the FBI, was in charge of the Crooked Hillary Clinton sham investigation,” Trump tweeted at the time.
Strzok’s affair with Page was cited by the DOJ in a letter sent by Will to Strzok in August 2018. Will recommended Strzok be demoted and suspended for 60 days without pay, but Bowdich overruled her, and the FBI fired Strzok the next day.
Will criticized the hundreds of Strzok-Page texts showing political bias against Trump and favoring Clinton.
“The lapses in judgment embodied in those messages and others like them risked undermining public confidence in two of the Bureau’s highest-profile investigations,” the DOJ told the court in 2019.
The DOJ said those texts “cast a pall over the FBI’s Clinton email and Russia investigations and the work of the special counsel.” Will noted “security violations” stemming from Strzok and Page using personal devices to conduct FBI business, which Will remarked was “replete with irony given the FBI’s criticism of Clinton for having done so.”
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The bureau unearthed tens of thousands of Clinton emails in late September 2016 on the laptop belonging to Huma Abedin’s husband, disgraced former New York congressman Anthony Weiner.
“We did not have confidence that Strzok’s decision to prioritize the Russia investigation over following up on the Midyear-related investigative lead discovered on the Weiner laptop was free from bias,” Horowitz said.
