Peter Strzok: one-man band
The twistings and turning of what we could call the case against Donald Trump are not easy to follow. But what has been revealed so far is a tangled web of interrelated actions on the part of investigators that indicate bias at the very least and arouse deep suspicion of more than that.
The story so far is one that would take a very lengthy post to explain, and I’m somewhat pressed for time today and won’t be writing that post now. Perhaps in the next few days. For now I’ll just point out one of the most startling things revealed lately: the way the name of Peter Strzok keeps cropping up, over and over.
The Strzok story as we first knew it began with a mysterious firing:
In August, ABC News reported that Strzok was removed from the investigation. The news came one week after agents executed a search warrant on the Virginia home of Trump’s now-indicted former campaign manager Paul Manafort.
The reason he was taken off the probe was unknown at the time, as he was well-respected in the industry as a law enforcement officer working counterintelligence cases. He was deemed to be one of the top investigators in the probe. ABC News reported that Strzok was taken off the Russia investigation and was sent to work in the F.B.I.’s human resource office, deemed a demotion within the agency.
A little over one month after Strzok’s departure, ABC News reported that F.B.I. lawyer Lisa Page also left the special Russia investigation…
While the departure of the two officials was well reported, they weren’t ever linked until now [“now” being the last few days].
The linkage turned out to be that the two were having an affair, and in their text messages they had exchanged anti-Trump statements. So they were relieved of their Trump-investigatory duties back in August, although we just learned that explanation very recently.
That news would have been enough by itself to taint the investigations at least somewhat, although I must say that there are probably many more people involved in these investigations who have political biases against Trump (and some for him, for that matter) and aren’t careless enough to have expressed them in text messages, or at least not in text messages that have been caught up (and therefore revealed) in the web of another investigation, as the texts between Strzok and Page were—a DOJ inspector general had connected them through an investigation of the FBI investigation of the 2016 elections.
So, it was a DOJ investigation of an FBI investigation (are you still with me?) that led to the uncovering of the Strzok/Page texts about Trump.
And now a group of other facts about Strzok’s involvement have been coming out. This guy was everywhere, a regular one-man band.
It turns out that it was Strzok who had interviewed Mike Flynn and thus set up
the basis for the charge that Flynn lied to the FBI, which is the substance of the plea deal Flynn recently made.
It turns out that we have yet to see a transcript of the interview. Does one exist?
It turns out that Strzok was the number 2 person heading up the FBI probe into Hillary Clinton’s emails, and he was one of several agents who interviewed Hillary Clinton in a three-hour session.
It turns out that Strzok changed and softened Comey’s original description of Hillary’s email set-up from “grossly negligent” to “extremely careless.”
It turns out that “there are reports” that “there was ‘documentary evidence’ that Strzok was purportedly obstructing the House probe into the [Trump] dossier.”
It turns out the Huma Abedin and Hillary Clinton were interviewed by Strzok during the email investigation, are known to have lied in those interviews, and were never charged with lying to the FBI.
There could even be more, but that’s plenty already. All this should rouse suspicion even in the minds of anti-Trump Democrats, although it probably won’t. It certainly rouses suspicion in me. The Strzok story also is interesting in terms of how the FBI works. Apparently the same higher-ups work on a host of interrelated cases, so that if bias exists in some of those people (and I have no doubt it often does, not just with Strzok) then that bias will have maximum effect.
This is just one vote; but, in my opinion the FBI and the Justice system has taken a major hit once again. I have no confidence at all.
For starters, the Special Counsel idea is terrible. The country has a huge Justice and Law Enforcement apparatus that is supposedly responsible to the people. Yet, we appoint an outside gunslinger in politically fraught situations; bestow unprecedented powers, and enormous budgets, along with the mandate to “find something”. So, they find something.
I have commented in a couple of venues, that should the FBI ever call on me, heaven forbid, I would not give them the time of day, for fear that they would claim that my statement disagreed with their watches and charge me with lying. Martha Stewart, Scooter Libby, and now General Flynn, no doubt agree.
This Strzok tale should do more than rouse suspicions. It is a tale of Rasputinesque proportions. The Deep State, which is now seen to be correctly named, is a Hydra-headed Democratic monster.
The grave pity is that perhaps only one of every ten thousand of us recognizes that the America of our fathers is slipping through our collective (intentionally) outspread fingers like dry sand, and once gone, cannot and will not be resurrected. Ever.
The special counsel law requires that the counsel be appointed to investigate criminal activity, and yet in the appointment, no criminal activity was alleged. He was to look into Russian interference in the election, which is not a crime. That fact alone ought to tell everyone that this is simply a partisan political witch hunt.
This Strzok character ought to be the last straw for any serious belief in the good faith of this investigation.
But for those determined to get Trump, it won’t be.
Wouldn’t it be a most delicious irony if President Trump turned out to be an honest man after all?
At the same time…we are seeing the spoiled leftovers of the most corrupt era in Democrat-run institutions…Clintons’ then Obama’s…the stench alone is going to take a Herculean draining & cleaning.
I still can’t understand why the FBI hasn’t required interviews to be recorded. Seems the whole purpose is to be able to use notes for a lying to the FBI charge
Israel if interviews are not recorded , it s a free for all, anything can be alledged, denied, exonerated take your pick, go for what ever you need, swamp dwellers.
Israel
Such as when the FBI didn’t record Hillary regarding the e-mails. FBI didn’t record Clinton interview, did not administer sworn oath.
The whole investigation is a fraud.
Israel Says:
December 5th, 2017 at 5:19 pm
I still can’t understand why the FBI hasn’t required interviews to be recorded. Seems the whole purpose is to be able to use notes for a lying to the FBI charge
Molly NH Says:
December 5th, 2017 at 5:37 pm
Israel if interviews are not recorded , it s a free for all, anything can be alledged, denied, exonerated take your pick, go for what ever you need, swamp dwellers.
Gringo Says:
December 5th, 2017 at 7:12 pm
Israel,
Such as when the FBI didn’t record Hillary regarding the e-mails. FBI didn’t record Clinton interview, did not administer sworn oath.
* * *
And decided not to prosecute her or any of her lying staffers, especially as it was soon known conclusively that Mills and Abedin had lied to the FBI.
As I have been reading around on the topic, it is this last point which is the one that most “sticks in my craw” – as some of the writers implied without saying exactly that phrase.
It is of a piece with the dismissal of Clinton’s clear violation of national security laws that would have gotten anyone else jailed immediately.
Strzok is Mueller’s Lucca Brosi.
Hit man of all talents.
I swear (and I have a daughter who is a 20 year FBI agent) the FBI, at least the top half, is a criminal conspiracy.
We knew that from Mark Felt.
Mike K, I had the same thought, and the analogy is almost exact. Strozk is the hit man doing the dirty work for Mueller and Comey.
I’m starting to wonder if Nunes’ committee work is being worked to come back and bite the FBI by getting the big fish to commit contempt of Congress. First get Strozk, then get his bosses. Probably a fantasy, but within the realm of possibility.
Strzok is the Forrest Gump of Washington D.C. He was involved in all the important FBI investigations and interviews since Trump became a candidate. He knows where the bodies are buried. (to use a metaphor) Time to bring him in to the House Intelligence Committee and put him under oath. He has the answers to a lot of questions about the creatures of the Swamp.
J.J.
He (Strzok) would plead the Fifth Amendment, and Democrats on the committee would protect him. But maybe I’m just cynical. or ignorant.
A couple of commenters here have pointed out that Hillary Clinton was not required to swear an oath that she would tell the truth (so help her God?).
Any such oath to such as Hillary Clinton is meaningless anyway. She is no more inclined to tell the truth having sworn any sort of oath, than she is absent any such swearing of oath.
And the Deep State is sufficiently deep that she’ll get away with whatever she needs to get away with, just as she’s always done. And there’s nothing anyone will do about it.
I was not surprised to find bias in the Mueller team- you knew it was there by just browsing the political donations members of his team have made.
Again, though, I will point out something- Mueller knew about Strzok for at least 5 months, as did Strzok’s direct supervisors at the FBI, and, surprise, surprise, surprise (a nod to the great Jim Nabors), his bias is finally public knowledge the day after Flynn’s plea is filed that was based on the interview and 302 done by Strzok himself. And note, Strzok wasn’t publicly outed by the IG investigation, the publications that led this, WaPo, NYTimes, and CNN almost surely were sourced by Mueller’s team itself since they knew that it had already been uncovered and could no longer be hidden. I imagine great and intense pressure was put on Flynn to make this plea before he and his lawyer learned of it in the news.
This is how the Dems rigged the Clinton investigation. The Hillary email investigation was a complete sham.
The two lovers were probably using FBI equipment to exchange texts and emails. That’s why Hillary had a private server. Using government equipment for personal stuff might be a firing offense. Completely separated from the FBI.
The text and emails will show two people with a very bad case of TDS.
There is cause to appoint a special counsel to investigate the special counsel.
Cornhead, just heard that Mr strozks a player, more that just the one co operating mistress. Maybe the others don’t co
Opetate
Don’t t Co operate, Lol
Flynn was ambushed McCabe called him to inform him that agents were coming to discuss the training program that they and Flynn were involved in. Without Mirandizing him midway through the interview sans lawyer Flynn realized it was an interrogation without a recording.
The agents felt that he just made errors of memory however Strzok overrode them and decided it was perjury and they then bankrupted him by threatening his son so he could to quote Dershowitz “compose “.
These are gestapo tactics that someone named Mueller and Weissmann are inherently capable of.
Avi: “These are gestapo tactics that someone named Mueller and Weissmann are inherently capable of.”
Weismann has quite a record of ruining people and then having his convictions overturned on appeal.
“Not everyone is a Weissmann fan. Sidney Powell, a federal prosecutor who is past president of the American Academy of Appellate Lawyers, wrote an opinion piece in the Hill that said, in part, that Weissmann “is not just a ‘tough’ prosecutor. Time after time, courts have reversed Weissmann’s most touted ‘victories’ for his tactics. This is hardly the stuff of a hero in the law. Weissmann, as deputy and later director of the Enron Task Force, destroyed the venerable accounting firm of Arthur Andersen LLP and its 85,000 jobs worldwide – only to be reversed several years later by a unanimous Supreme Court.”
For more read this:
http://thehill.com/opinion/white-house/356253-judging-by-muellers-staffing-choices-he-may-not-be-very-interested-in
Motto for us all, *don’t think talk to cops,about the weather. How,many kids you have or that training program you are in*.Always ask for your lawyer. I called for an ambulance in my town, was actually an innocuous event, however cops responded too
While EMTS were talking to me I noticed officers perusing my living room and kitchen. Seemed to be looking for ash trays, they looked at every coffee table. I have aspirin & BP med s on my sink shelf, they took a good little gander over there too.
Motto for us all, *don’t think talk to cops,about the weather. How,many kids you have or that training program you are in*.Always ask for your lawyer. I called for an ambulance in my town, was actually an innocuous event, however cops responded too
While EMTS were talking to me I noticed officers perusing my living room and kitchen. Seemed to be looking for ash trays, they looked at every coffee table. I have aspirin & BP med s on my sink shelf, they took a good little gander over there too.
Oops sorry about double post, must have been that cop looking over my shoulder!
As judge Alex Kozinsky pointed out, there are so many federal felonies now, the prosecutor can always get you for something.
http://alex.kozinski.com/articles/Youre_Probably_a_Federal_Criminal.pdf
“did you talk to the russians to collude in the election?”
“no”
So then you didn’t speak with the russians”
“no”
perjury