A top Republican wants to know if a high-ranking FBI official who leaked “sensitive” information and improperly accepted a gift from the media was Peter Strzok, the former FBI agent who is well known for his text messages displaying a negative opinion of President Trump.
Rep. Doug Collins, the ranking member of the Judiciary Committee, wrote letters to Attorney General William Barr and Justice Department Inspector General Michael Horowitz on Thursday with questions about the DOJ watchdog’s investigation into FBI misconduct.
In his letter to Horowitz, Collins asked about a one-page report released on Wednesday that found a now-former FBI deputy assistant director “engaged in misconduct” by disclosing information to the media that had been filed under seal in federal court, maintaining dozens of unauthorized contacts with reporters, and accepting a $225 ticket from a member of the media to attend a dinner sponsored by the media.
The Georgia congressman said he has reason to believe Strzok was the unnamed former official
[Related: DOJ inspector general: Ex-FBI official leaked ‘sensitive’ info, improperly accepted gift from media]
“While the DAD is not named in the Summary, there are several indications the DAD in question is former FBI counterintelligence agent Peter Strzok,” Collins said. “For example, the 2018 Report noted, ‘Peter Strzok is an experienced counterintelligence agent who was promoted to Deputy Assistant Director (DAD) of the Espionage Section in September 2016.’ The 2018 Report also said, ‘[m]ost troubling, on October 29, 2016, Strzok forwarded from his FBI account to his personal email account an email about the proposed search warrant the Midyear team was seeking on the Weiner laptop. This email included a draft of the search warrant affidavit, which contained information from the Weiner investigation that appears to have been under seal at the time in the Southern District of New York . . .'”
Collins asked Horowitz if Strzok is the individual referenced in the report and pressed the inspector general and Barr on whether prosecution was declined. Despite the FBI official’s violations of bureau policy, the inspector general said “prosecution of the [deputy assistant director] was declined” and the matter was being referred to the FBI for “appropriate action.”
Strzok was the lead investigator of the Hillary Clinton emails inquiry and opened the counterintelligence investigation into the Trump campaign’s ties to Russia in the summer of 2016.
Text messages between Strzok and former FBI lawyer Lisa Page, in which they displayed a negative opinion of Trump, were uncovered over the course of the Justice Department’s inspector general investigation into the DOJ and FBI’s conduct during the investigation into Hillary Clinton’s unauthorized private email server. Upon the discovery of these texts, Strzok was removed from special counsel Robert Mueller’s Russia investigation and was later fired from the bureau.
[Also read: DOJ inspector general found Carter Page FISA extensions were illegally obtained, Joe diGenova says]
The report, which came out in the summer of 2018, said their text messages “potentially indicated or created the appearance that investigative decisions were impacted by bias or improper considerations. But the inspector general determined that there was no evidence “improper considerations, including political bias, directly affected the specific investigative decisions.”
Among these texts was a reference to a “media leak strategy,” which raised concerns last fall among Republican lawmakers and Trump. Despite warnings about “troubling evidence that the practice of coordinated media interactions” with the Justice Department and FBI, Strzok’s lawyer Aitan Goelman said the term “media leak strategy” in his client’s messages refered to a DOJ-wide initiative to detect and stop aides sharing information with the media. “The President and his enablers are once again peddling unfounded conspiracy theories to mislead the American People,” Goelman said in a written statement.
Collins, who set a June 7 deadline, also asked Barr and Horowitz about the existence of other investigations into other former FBI officials, including former General Counsel James Baker, former Director James Comey, and former Deputy Director Andrew McCabe.
“Leaking classified and sealed material is a dangerous, illegal action. The DOJ’s declination to prosecute leaks is concerning and only emboldens leakers to continue their reckless actions,” Collins said in a tweet.
Barr testified this month that the Justice Department has “multiple criminal leak investigations underway.”
