The FBI agent who came under fire after it was revealed he sent anti-Trump text messages provided answers that were “not believable” about the “hateful nature” of the text messages, according to House Judiciary Committee Chairman Bob Goodlatte, R-Va.
Peter Strzok testified in a closed-door session before the the House Judiciary and Oversight committees Wednesday, prompting Goodlatte to accuse him of producing unbelievable answers to questions related to the text messages.
“His explanations for … those questions about that hateful attitude are not believable,” Goodlatte said in an interview with Fox News Wednesday night.
Goodlatte also said that FBI lawyers for Strzok had told him to not answer many questions from the committees.
“That’s going to be a serious problem moving forward so we will be raising questions with the FBI and with the Department of Justice about why it is that their counsel is instructing Mr. Strzok not to answer questions,” Goodlatte said.
Strzok was a leading official in the FBI’s investigation on Hillary Clinton’s private email server. The appearance before the panels were part of the committees’ investigation into the Justice Department’s actions in 2016.
It was also revealed last year that Strzok and fellow FBI agent Lisa Page, who both worked on special counsel Robert Mueller’s Russia probe, had an affair and exchanged text messages critical of Trump. Strzok was removed from the Mueller investigation last year and Page resigned from her post in 2018.
Inspector General Michael Horowitz said in a letter to Congress — prior to the release of his June report that detailed misconduct of how the FBI managed its Clinton probe — that the texts between Strzok and Page negatively impacted the FBI’s standing by signaling there was bias within the agency, but Horowitz ultimately determined that the scandal didn’t impact Mueller’s probe.
