Fired special agent Peter Strzok filed suit against the FBI, Attorney General William Barr, and FBI Director Christopher Wray on Tuesday, claiming he was wrongfully terminated.
Strzok, a key figure in both the Clinton email investigation and the Trump-Russia investigation, also alleged his constitutional rights were violated and is seeking reinstatement at and back pay from the bureau.
He claimed in his lawsuit that his firing is “the result of unrelenting pressure from President Trump and his political allies in Congress and the media.” And he stated that Trump “pressured” Wray and then-Attorney General Jeff Sessions to fire him.
Strzok’s complaint 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, which he alleged to be a violation of the Privacy Act.
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. “It was a total fraud on the American public and should be properly redone!”
Strzok came under heavy criticism after the revelation of thousands of highly political anti-Trump texts he’d exchanged with his mistress, FBI lawyer Lisa Page, throughout 2016 and 2017.
In one notable exchange in August 2016, Page asked asked Strzok, “[Trump’s] not ever going to become president, right? Right?!”
“No. No he won’t,” Strzok replied. “We’ll stop it.”
Strzok’s lawsuit today alleged that “the DOJ’s disclosure of these records to the media was not lawful.”
And his filing specifically said that his First Amendment rights had been violated because his “protected political speech” should not have been a fireable offense and that his Fifth Amendment rights were violated because the FBI deprived him of his “property interest” in his employment “without due process.”
Strzok’s lawsuit also accused the Trump administration of double standards, claiming that his own texts didn’t violate the Hatch Act but that Trump has encouraged “partisan political speech by federal employees” so long as the speech supports Trump, pointing to Kellyanne Conway as a particular example.
And his complaint said he’d been unfairly singled out, claiming that no punishment had been taken against FBI agents who allegedly expressed criticisms of Hillary Clinton or leaked information against her in 2016.
Strzok was criticized in Inspector General Michael Horowitz’s June 2018 report on the FBI’s “Midyear Exam” inquiry into Clinton in 2016, noting that Strzok “prioritized the Russia investigation over following up on a Midyear-related investigative lead,” specifically information found by the FBI on disgraced former New York Rep. Anthony Weiner’s laptop. Horowitz said last year that he “did not have confidence that Strzok’s decision … was free from bias.”
He also headed up the Russia-related “Crossfire Hurricane” investigation launched in the summer of 2016, and Horowitz and Barr are both conducting ongoing investigations into the actions taken by the DOJ and FBI during that time, including scrutinizing Strzok.
Strzok came under an internal review by the FBI’s Office of Professional Responsibility in connection with his text messages and other actions and, in Strzok’s complaint, he notes that FBI Assistant Director Candice Will recommended on Aug. 8, 2018 that Strzok be demoted and suspended for 60 days without pay. But FBI Deputy Director David Bowdich overruled that decision and the FBI fired Strzok the next day.
