Disgraced FBI special agent Peter Strzok, a senior member of the bureau who gained notoriety in recent months over his anti-Trump text messages to a colleague, was grilled for nearly 10 hours during a joint congressional committee hearing on Thursday.
At issue was Strzok’s anti-Trump texts to former FBI lawyer and lover Lisa Page that coincided with his leading of the investigations into both former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s private email server scandal and the alleged Trump/Russia 2016 election collusion, as well as his involvement in the subsequent Robert Mueller special counsel probe.
The hearing proved to be a heated battle, as Strzok displayed an arrogant smugness in defiance of pointed questions from Republicans that he largely danced around, while Democrats sought to upend and undermine the entire hearing with a plethora of interruptions, parliamentary maneuvers and outright praise for the man who helped let Clinton off the hook while ferociously targeting Trump.
Former House speaker and presidential candidate Newt Gingrich was less than impressed with Strzok’s performance and cooperation in the hearing and suggested during an appearance on Fox Business that the FBI agent should be held in contempt of Congress.
“I think they have to move to hold him in contempt and throw him in jail,” Gingrich said of Congress and Strzok.
“This is a person who is willfully standing up and refusing to appear as a congressional witness and he was a government employee at the time,” he continued.
“He has every obligation to inform the legislative branch, and I don’t think they have any choice except to move a motion of contempt because he is fundamentally — and so is his girlfriend (Page) — they’re both fundamentally in violation of the entire constitutional process,” he added. – READ MORE
[divider][/divider]FBI agent Peter Strzok refused Thursday to hand over his text messages to Congress for further investigation, telling the U.S. House of Representatives that the Inspector General had already reviewed the relevant texts and found “no acts of bias.”
Strzok had been the lead agent in both the investigation of former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s emails, and of alleged Russian interference in the 2016 presidential election. He was part of Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s team until he was removed due to the appearance of political bias, thanks to the emergence of anti-Trump text messages he had exchanged with his mistress.
House Judiciary Committee chair Rep. Bob Goodlatte (R-LA) pointed out that Congress had independent authority to investigate, and asked Strzok directly: “Will you authorize release of them [the texts] to the United States Congress?” Strzok said: “No, sir.”
Earlier, Stzrok told Goodlatte that the Inspector General had allowed him and his legal counsel to review his text messages with former FBI lawyer Lisa Page, and to determine which were work-related. The texts included many statements hostile to Donald Trump and his supporters, and referred to stopping Trump from being elected and impeaching him after he had taken office.– READ MORE
[divider][/divider]Anti-Trump FBI agent Peter Strzok was given a limited security clearance ahead of his testimony before Congress on Thursday, a Justice Department official tells The Daily Caller News Foundation.
The official disclosed Strzok’s security clearance status after Strzok claimed during a joint hearing on Thursday that he has a top secret security clearance.
“You currently have what classification?” Strzok was asked by Georgia Republican Rep. Doug Collins during a joint hearing of the House Judiciary and House Oversight Committees.
“I have a top secret clearance with some SCI compartments,” replied Strzok, the former deputy director of the FBI’s counterintelligence division. “SCI” is an acronym for highly classified materials known as Sensitive Compartmented Information.
The statement appeared to be a contradiction to a claim that Attorney General Jeff Sessions made during an interview in June. – READ MORE
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