The FBI’s 2018 draft letter of dismissal to disgraced agent Peter Strzok is a model for how the bureau should deal with its own agents gone bad. Alas, the FBI appears to let too many of its bad apples go unpunished.
Strzok was the high-ranking agent in the FBI counterintelligence division who helped screw up the investigations into former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s email servers and into Russian interference on behalf of then-candidate Donald Trump in the 2016 presidential campaign. Regarding the former, the Justice Department’s Office of Professional Responsibility charged him with “dereliction of supervisory responsibility” for failing to investigate potentially classified Clinton emails that were shared on an unsecured laptop. He also played a large role in pushing the most anti-Trump — and least true — allegations in the Russia investigation.
And he did so all while his private messages showed that he and fellow agent Lisa Page, with whom he was having an extramarital affair, expressed a determination to stop Trump from being elected, even as they began what should have been a neutral review of the evidence. The Justice Department also accused Strzok of “security violations.”
FBI Deputy Director David Bowdich’s Aug. 8 draft letter firing Strzok minced no words. “It is difficult to fathom,” Bowdich wrote, “the repeated, sustained errors of judgment you made while serving as the lead agent in two of the most high profile investigations in the country.”
And: “Your sustained pattern of bad judgment in the use of an FBI device has called into question for many the decisions made during both the Clinton e-mail investigation and the initial states of the Russian Collusion investigation. … It [is] difficult to imagine another incident like yours which brought so much discredit to the organization.” The damage to the bureau, he wrote, “will take years to overcome.”
Amazingly, Strzok is suing the FBI for wrongful termination. His suit is absurd. Bowdich’s letter is among the documents included in the FBI’s answer to Strzok’s suit. The evidence of Strzok’s unprofessional behavior is overwhelming, and the FBI was fully justified in dismissing him.
One reason the suit is absurd is that it says his dismissal was politically motivated. Coming from someone who quite obviously showed improper political motives, the chutzpah is astonishing. What’s even more ludicrous is that Strzok accuses his superiors of being biased in favor of conservatives. This comes even as more and more actions by the FBI and the Justice Department, going back years, show politicization in the other direction. Strzok almost certainly did not suffer, but benefited, from a liberal bias at the FBI.
As it was, Bowdich’s letter was right: Strzok’s misdeeds put a stench around both the Clinton and the Russia investigations (or the lack of the former) that still cling to the bureau today. They also besmirched the more than half of the Russia investigation that was entirely valid: the fact that Russia did work hard to try to help Trump win the 2016 election. By helping gin up unwarranted suspicion that Trump actively conspired with Russia to do so, though, Strzok was part of the cabal that pushed the investigation in the wrong direction — in ways that did lasting damage to the U.S. political system and to the public’s trust in equal justice.
The letter was right: Strzok is a disgrace. Rather than suing, he should slink back to his gig on MSNBC, where he can spout leftist claptrap to his heart’s content.
