Peter Strzok Denies Personal Bias Influenced His Professional Actions
But is anyone buying it?
Thursday, FBI agent Peter Strzok addressed a joint House Oversight and Judiciary hearing where he was grilled on anti-Trump text messages he sent while conducting the Russia and Clinton investigations.
“After months of investigations, there’s simply no evidence of bias in my professional actions,” said Strzok in his opening statement.
Strzok was pulled from Mueller’s investigative team when Mueller became aware of unflattering texts exchanged with FBI attorney Lisa Page. In those texts, Strzok called Trump a “loathsome human being”, “an idiot”, and “awful.” Strzok also professed his loyalty to the Resistance.
The New York Times reported at the time:
On July 27, Ms. Page wrote, “She just has to win now. I’m not going to lie, I got a flash of nervousness yesterday about Trump.” That text message was sent after the Clinton investigation had been closed. Days later, the F.B.I. began investigating possible coordination between Russian officials and the Trump campaign.
The two F.B.I. officials also criticized Mr. Trump as the Russia investigation was continuing. They told internal investigators that their comments were influenced by the troubling evidence they were seeing about Mr. Trump’s campaign ties to Russia, according to a person familiar with the internal investigation.
F.B.I. officials who worked directly with Mr. Strzok on the Clinton and Trump investigations said they never detected any bias in his investigative work. The F.B.I. director, Christopher A. Wray, said last week at a congressional hearing that he could not discuss the texts because of the continuing investigation. But Mr. Wray said that he would “hold people accountable after there has been an appropriate investigation, independent and objective, by the inspector general into the handling of the prior matter.”
The F.B.I. declined to comment. Mr. Strzok, a former Army officer, and Ms. Page, a prosecutor who started her government career right out of law school, are career officials, not political appointees.
The hearing was a complete disaster, with everyone involved overly eager to score a couple points and toss in their contrived zingers, but the exchange with outgoing Rep. Gowdy is worth watching:
Strzok clung to the only reasonable way out of this mess, that despite volumes of evidence illustrating the depth of his disdain for the president, there exists no evidence that his clear biases impacted his professional work. Logically, it’s sound enough. Realistically, not so much.
It’s not impossible to be objective beyond political ideology, but the degree to which several members of Mueller’s team disliked Trump and clearly held loyalties to Hillary certainly taints the argument that Mueller’s Russian investigation remains focused and apolitical.
But the more we see of the Resistance and the measures they’re willing to take to subvert Trump’s presidency, it’s increasingly difficult to believe Strzok’s professionalism was the stronger ideological force.
Lastly:
I foresee this being used as a meme or gif. #Creepy #Strzok #FoxNews pic.twitter.com/uUHC7wv7EP
— Holly Bowie (@Hollybowie) July 12, 2018
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Comments
I listened to Mark Levin play excerpts from the House hearings last night. This Strzok guy is a sociopath, and it’s frightening.
He’s the sleaziest of lying crap-weasels who believes he’s a law unto himself, can decide issues of national import with impunity, and use that law to persecute, not prosecute. And Mueller is no better. Strzok would be right at home in Putin’s KGB.
The tragic part is ‘congressional hearings’ mean feckless circus with no consequences.
Sociopath–exactly the word that came to mind as I listened to this little big man.
I watched pieces of it and listened when I could. It is worth it to watch the whole thing on cspan. The Dems did everything they could to keep distracting it. It was a circus. They are working so hard to protect the deep state. It is funny because in 1973 they would be just the opposite of this.
Gohmert sounded like he was way off base when I heard him on the radio, but after watching the whole thing, I missed the key statement – Do you realize that your relationship with Page could put you in conflict for blackmail?
When my wife heard some of the testimony she said “That guy sounds really sleazy” Well that guy was Strzok! Little did she know that she spotted the snake.
Here is the csapn link part 1. There are two parts.
https://www.c-span.org/video/?447953-1/fbi-deputy-assistant-director-peter-strzok-testifies-2016-investigations-part-1
Do you realize that your relationship with Page could put you in conflict for blackmail?
That’s one of the keys: He knows it, and his superiors know it. So why wasn’t he stripped of his clearance and fired a year ago?
He’s arrogant and smirking for a reason: He knows that he’s protected by even bigger sociopathic slimeballs in the Swamp.
Strzok is just another way of spelling Comey with too many consonants, just an outside the law omnipotence. It’s odd how libs have diaries that lie to a reader, old emails that were ‘ghost written’ by someone else, and current emails that mean whatever they need to mean at any given moment.
Most, if not all, of the dinosaur media buy this hook, line and sinker. They not only buy into it, they promote the premise of a loyal, hard working, Government servant of the people. What a guy, he even picked another servant of the folks to be his mistress!
I know exactly what you mean. A few years ago in a debate my lib opponent actually stated that Ted Kennedy had done penance for drowning Mary Jo through the sacrifice of serving as a United States Senator for 48 years.
All those cocktails at Martha’s Vineyard were actually the daily self-flagellations of a Penitent keeping the torturous memory of his sins a fresh open wound.
Ted: Another double Bob, on Verizon’s lobby tab
Bartender: My God Sir, are you sure. When are you going to stop punishing yourself?
Ted: When the Crowley twin arrive Bob, and not a minute sooner.
Bartender: You poor man.
They know where their bread is buttered.
Don’t kid yourself. The leftists in the LHMFM know he’s lying. The leftists on the committee know he’s lying. The Republicans know he’s lying. You know he’s lying, and I know he’s lying. Strzok knows he’s lying, everyone at the highest levels of the FBI know he’s lying, and Rosenstein knows he’s lying.
It’s just that his cheering squad in Congress, the press, the FBI, and DoJ want it to work. And they’re going to help make it work to the best of their ability. One way they’re going to do it is to accuse people who see through the obvious lies as unpatriotic Americans who are doing Putin’s bidding and OBTW helping the terrorists to win.
Rosenstein pulled a Strzok today when he engaged in that PR stunt pretending to indict 12 Russian GRU officers. Like Strzok he wrapped himself in the flag and said that we shouldn’t think like partisan Democrats or Republicans but patriotic Americans. Personally I doubt they even have any proof of the defendants’ guilt because they bet this will never go to trial (and that may prove to be a bad bet; their last Russian indictment was). I don’t question Mueller’s integrity, or Rosenstein’s or Strzok’s for that matter. They’ve demonstrated they have none, and it’s not possible to question something that you already know doesn’t exist.
And that’s going to be the designated “unpatriotic” position.
The same people that tell us systemic racism exists simply becaus you are white are the same ones telling us that Stzrok didn’t let his obvious bias against Trump affect his investigation in any way at all. I have an observation for you “progressives”: your ideological double standard is why we wish you would turn to dust and blow away.
Statements indicating gross and deliberate bias are not themselves evidence that bias actually pervaded his work.
They’re pretty damn good evidence that he had every intention of letting them pervade his work, but it’s conceivable that his evil plans failed.
Conceivable, sure. But is still sounds like weasely rubbish to me.
Who the hell hires these people?
Who kept promoting him?
They saw something in his character that they thought would fit positions of higher and higher authority?
This is unbelievable; yet more phony FBI and DOJ ‘investigations’:
‘Stroke admitted to House Judiciary Chairman Bob Goodlatte (R-VA) that he had not, in fact, turned over all of his text messages to the Inspector General, and that he had been allowed to determine which ones had “material that was relevant to FBI business”’
https://truepundit.com/shock-deep-state-fbi-director-wray-allowed-peter-strzok-to-decide-which-texts-were-relevant-to-hand-over-to-ig/
Not to worry! The text messages he did not turn over were all about yoga workouts and his daughter’s upcoming wedding plans!
Compare the attitudes of Comey, Rosenstein and Strzok. They’re remarkably similar- sanctimonious, self-righteous, filled with hubris, and arrogant. Obviously, to be in the upper echelons of the FBI, you must be a sociopath.
Seemingly, they all insist that the DOJ/FBI are superior institutions to the legislature. Worse yet, the DOJ/FBI is superior to the congress; it can simply deny congress any information it wishes to keep hidden and the congress cannot do anything about it.
“So, Mister Strzok, if you were the defense attorney for a high-profile client going to trial, and you found text messages that the prosecution wrote roughly similar to yours about your client, would you be dancing the Samba or the Foxtrot in celebration?”
#QuestionsNobodyAskedStrozkButShould
Bob Dylan… https://goo.gl/T3d27J
And you know what? He’s going to get away with all of it. Probably even get a book deal and land a gig on MSNBC as a “consequence” for his actions. He and his subpoena dodging FBI lawyer both.
And do you know why? Because they both KNOW they are above the law and can’t be touched. That’s why they are soaking with arrogance.
They have no fear because everyone still operates under the social compact that The Law is the last resort. Bribe the right judge, wipe the server with a cloth, arkancide any loose ends and the Right will just throw up their hands: “aw gee, well at least we didn’t now the Law to get at the devil”.
This is a perfect example of what I was getting at in my recent “colorful” remarks about the need for object lessons. They don’t respect the Rule if Law because they have forgotten the Law not only protects the innocent, it protects the corrupt from mob violence
They have attempted to overturn our legitimate election of the United States President with a corrupt investigation of trumped up charges. A soft coup attempt. And when busted they will get to go back to their private life without suffering any significant consequences.
This site holds the rule of law paramount. Sometimes I wonder if it’s a suicide pact. But I’m pleased to see how much we are outraged by their behavior. That’s something at least.
Object lessons, Fen?
Exactly what are you referring to here?
Three object lessons I can think of:
-Fire Strzok
-Fire Rosenstein
-Fire Sessions
-Hire Guliani as AG
-indict Strozk
-Indict Comey
-Indict Hillary Clinton
-And continue…
Geez – I can’t count any better than obama, can I?
A historical example I think many here are familiar with (although I’m not certain how much it’s been stretched in the telling):
Some terrorists kidnapped Russian civilians and made their demands to the Soviets. Russian intelligence identified a few of the terrorist and tracked down the whereabouts of the families of these terrorists. They then captured the eldest makes related to these terrorists, castrated them, stuffed the renains in the mouth before decapitating them.
The heads were then delivered to the terrorists, with the implied promise that more heads would follow. The terrorists immediately released their Russian prisoners and fled the area.
But here is the important part: while that terror org never threatened the Russians again, several OTHER terrorist cells observing the whole thing were ALSO so discouraged by it that they never threatened the Russians either.
That’s just one example of the power object lessons can have on those who place themselves outside the Rule of Law. The concept is even codified in International Law – the lesser standards allowed when using force against terrorists, as opposed to uniformed military personnel.
Hiroshima and Nagasaki are other examples.
You may also be an example. I rarely see you post here, I think it’s only been the few times you attempted to troll me (like this one). Are you a sock puppet account? Like maybe Rags or some such? I only ask because, if true, it indicates you’ve experienced an object lesson (from staff here?) to a degree that you are motivated to troll under an account seperate from your normal one.
Of course…That explains everything.
I’m a Russian bot – er, a sockpuppet account. But whose? Milhouse? Ragspierre?
It can’t possibly be that I’m a longterm lurker who got irritated enough to do some datamining when someone hid behind lazy moderators and lied about their own actions in a feeble attempt to troll other people. I mean, that would make no sense at all, since I’ve had an account on this site for longer than you’ve known of its existence, and I’ve been reading this site for years before I created an account. Yeah, definitely a Russian bot – er, sockpuppet. Of someone. For reasons.
But it’s very interesting that you went from
straight to ‘sock puppet troll.’
Almost as interesting as that you resigned the field instead of taking up the debate.
But I digress!
Here, you assign your political enemies the same moral level as Chechen terrorists and suggest torture in order to realign their and others thinking.
In the past you’ve suggested that execution and murders of immediate family are all acceptable to punish those you disagree with…then tried to back off and say that you were merely asking when such would be acceptable.
Now, you refer to the same things as ‘needful object lessons.’ I do not expect apologia for your defamation of others character.
I submit to you, sir, that we should not advocate for the extrajudicial murder of political enemies.
I further submit that torture degrades the torturer to a far greater degree than simple murder does to a murderer, and that Sins of the Father is an idea that has largely passed its time.
Nowhere in the constitution of this republic or in the declaration of its independence does it ever suggest that resistance and insurrection against the crown includes dragging bureaucrats out of their offices, lining them up, and shooting them, nor does it include murdering the children of state officials pour encourager les autres.
I think you need to do some reading on the French revolution.
Asura: “I’m a Russian bot”
Why so defensive? I simply asked if you were a sock puppet. I didn’t even accuse, I just noted why you smelled funny and asked you to explain the stench.
Now you say you’re just a concerned lurker doing his patriotic duty. Hey, we’re not going to find out later you’re doing the typical gaslighting of Antifa or Black Bloc, will we? Do you think it’s okay to punch a Nazi in the face? Just asking.
As for your question, anyone who’s followed your little drama knows its in bad faith. You know exactly what I mean by the term “object lesson”, as I covered it in depth during your last two dramatic episodes.
You are just frustrated and trying to get me to repeat myself 40 different ways until I say something you can take out of context and distort to score a cheap shot.
Or, put another way, you’re just frustrated I won’t repeat myself 40 different ways until I say something you can take out of context and distort to score a cheap shot.
But I’m just playing with you to delay your pearl clutching faux outrage “episode” until staff can slide in a fainty couch so you don’t accidentally pull a Freddie Gray as you fall to the ground. Keep that snowflake noggin intact.
So while we wait, do you actually believe I’m advocating a nuclear strike on Strozk, since I referenced Hiroshima and Nagasaki? What about the castration and beheading of Lisa Page? Is that your next false accusation? Because I think, even as a metaphor, there is a slight er shortcoming in that regard.
Oh, the fainting couches are here. Get to it I guess.
https://youtu.be/f3HebsWpZ1Q
Asura: “Here, you assign your political enemies the same moral level as Chechen terrorists and suggest torture in order to realign their and others thinking.”
No, I never assigned Strozk/Page to the same moral level of terrorists. That’s an invalid assumption on your part and a perfect example of your intellectual dishonesty on this topic.
You asked what I meant by the term “object lesson”, I gave you a historical example of one. The only correlation between the two is that people outside the law, people not even involved in the incident, were discouraged from taking illegal action.
Asura: “in the past you’ve suggested that execution and murders of immediate family are all acceptable to punish those you disagree with”
No, I have never suggested that as an acceptable punishment for mere disagreement. In fact, quite the opposite – if you were fair and unbiased, you would use your Google Fu skills to unearth example after example of me telling my political opponents (not “enemies”) that while I disagree with their speech, I would (and have literally) defended their right to say it with my very life.
You are foul
Asura: “Nowhere in the constitution of this republic or in the declaration of its independence does it ever suggest that resistance and insurrection against the crown includes dragging bureaucrats out of their offices, lining them up, and shooting them”
Agreed. But when you done attacking that glorious strawman, revisit the American Revolution and consider that, under British law it was not only illegal but treasonous. Do you think they had the moral right to resolve the issue with violence?
What about the American diplomats? Were their diplomatic efforts backstopped by the threat of war? Would their diplomacy have had any effect on a opponent not familiar with the horrors that war promised? If so, why do we even have diplomatic talks to avoid war? The threat of violence has always haunted foreign policy, it’s the reason political leaders take such pains to sit down and handle their disputes in civil reasoned negotiations.
Moving from global to local, is police authority backed by the threat of violence? Do you believe criminals avoid fighting arresting officers in America because they fear extended time in jail or because they know police will use lethal force if necessary? Compare that to countries like the UK where some officers only carry clubs. Are the criminals not bolder in their criminality? Do they not iniate violence against these police more often?
The concept that the threat of violence backstops the Rule of Law is not problematic or even controversial. The only room for dispute here is whether violence is acceptable in response to corrupt officials who are no longer subject to the rule of law. Is it a social compact or a suicide pact?
If government officials ordered DHS agents to round up Jews and ship them on trains to be exterminated in concentration camps, would you find it acceptable to use violence to stop them?
If not, then I would ask if there is ever any situation where violence would be acceptable? Or would you just “lose gracefully” as we have seen so many conservatives embrace?
3 replies in series. Nice.
When did you stop beating your husband?
Why are you so ready to approach ad hominem?
Well, no. You didn’t. Since you didn’t use the term object lesson at all. What you actually said was that you were posing ‘hypothetical’ questions in order to determine when it was acceptable to cross over from a legal insurrection to an armed revolt.
Hypothetical questions like:
Fen, what do you mean by object lessons?
Yes…I’m intellectually dishonest. Let’s go with that. I’m also attacking the straw man of…uh…your definition of direct action? Right.
Also, I…don’t think I’m under any obligation to use my google fu skills to look up information you should, literally, have at your fingertips. I skimmed over roughly a hundred of your posts stretching back to 2016 that were brought up by a quick and dirty google search under Milhouse’s criteria – Fen Ragspierre Murder ( http://bfy.tw/J2kC ). Feel free to provide links defending yourself – I mean, that’s what you want, right? Well, you agreed with Fuzzy that she was under no obligation to look for stuff that Milhouse said existed. You say it exists. You prove it.
Your third post is pretty much entirely full of red herrings. I’m just gunna ignore it.
A historical example I think many here are familiar with (although I’m not certain how much it’s been stretched in the telling):
Some terrorists kidnapped Russian civilians and made their demands to the Soviets. Russian intelligence identified a few of the terrorist and tracked down the whereabouts of the families of these terrorists. They then captured the eldest makes related to these terrorists, castrated them, stuffed the renains in the mouth before decapitating them.
The heads were then delivered to the terrorists, with the implied promise that more heads would follow. The terrorists immediately released their Russian prisoners and fled the area.
But here is the important part: while that terror org never threatened the Russians again, several OTHER terrorist cells observing the whole thing were ALSO so discouraged by it that they never threatened the Russians either.
That’s just one example of the power object lessons can have on those who place themselves outside the Rule of Law. The concept is even codified in International Law – the lesser standards allowed when using force against terrorists, as opposed to uniformed military personnel.
Hiroshima and Nagasaki are other examples.
You may also be an example. I rarely see you post here, I think it’s only been the few times you attempted to troll me (like this one). Are you a sock puppet account? Like maybe Rags or some such? I only ask because, if true, it indicates you’ve experienced an object lesson (from staff here?) to a degree that you are motivated to troll under an account seperate from your normal one.
Tom Hagen: Come on, Mikey…
Michael Corleone: Tom, wait a minute. I’m talking about a cop that’s mixed up in drugs. I’m talking about a – a – a dishonest cop – a crooked cop who got mixed up in the rackets and got what was coming to him.
I have become convinced that in addition to term limits for elected officials, we need to eliminate all civil service pensions and put a cap of 10 years on civil service employment. Ten years working for a city, ten for a county, ten for a state, and ten for the federal government would give a 40 year career while helping to keep anyone from getting too entrenched in the “system”. As for eliminating government pensions, I have always been opposed to having people administer a system (Social Security) that they are exempted from.
Seems the FBI is still following in J. Edgar’s footsteps.
I’m still trying to wrap my head around the idea that FBI employees have this much contempt for the Rule of Law, Congressional Oversight, and the will of the American people.
Are there ANY principles they still adhere to? Might as well be the GRU or KGB at this point. If I ignored their subpoena or lied like this during an FBI interview, I’d be in a cell still awaiting sentencing, like Flynn.
How the hell does the FBI expect Mueller’s investigation to have any authority when their own people don’t respect the law?
And the “10% bad apples” argument is bull. Every organization has their 10%, it’s the 90% that look away and do nothing that are the problem. If Strozk and Page were outliers we wouldn’t even be having this conversation. They would have been nipped in the bud by the people we thought were white hats.
Shame on you FBI. The corruption is systemic. The FBI has zero credibility now, and respect for their authority is noes-diving. Take the word of an FBI agent at a jury trial? Are you kidding me?
Fire everyone at DOJ and FBI. Nuke the sites from orbit just to be sure, then start over from scratch.
Yep, FBI must be eliminated and reconstituted as a different organization.
Strzok is indicative of total cultural and institutional decay at FBI.
Start over.
Yep, start over.
The current fib works against the Americans. Probably always has, but it is more exposed now.
We’re fortuneate that the DOJ/FBI only go after the ‘bad guys’. We’re unfortunate that’s it’s only the DOJ/FBI that determine who the ‘bad guys’ are.
J Edgar set the culture for the FBI long ago, and it wasn’t good then, even if it did some good deeds. The FBI has it’s purpose, but so much has been compromised by the politics and the narcissism that runs through the agency, I’m not sure it can be fixed as it is.
I believe it has been used as a political weapon against those who don’t adhere to their desires, as Strzok has displayed, as Comey and McCabe have displayed. There are good people in the organization, but corruption runs through it. Sociopath Strzok kept rising through the agency, which is deeply troubling, as it signals that leadership is every bit as twisted as he is. How do you go about fixing something that is like an old car, hundreds of thousands of miles on it, rusted frame, and lost brakes? At some point you can’t keep repairing it.
with all the talk about muller comey etc are (R),
the bottom line is that ALL the swamp rats are and were
#NEVERTRUMPers.
Again the people on LI get all hopped up about stuff like this but the rapidly changing US demographic, as exemplified by Barry being Prez, doesn’t care spit about any of this. In the future when Corey or Kamala or Alexandria take over Peter Strokee and Lisa Stroker will look like the 2 most honest and non biased DOJ employees ever.
Like it or not, this is now the new norm and a norm not really all that bad compared to what will become normal as the changing demographic increases almost exponentially. larger and larger.
Strzok and Page [aka Boris and Natasha] are only a side show. And, while both willingly participated in this scandal, they were just pawns. Strzok and Page could not have influenced the outcome of the Servergate investigation without support up to the President of the United States. The surveillance of the Trump campaign required the active participation of higher ups in the DOJ, FBI, CIA, NSA, the DNI and the WH. Then we have the unmasking and leaking. It becomes increasingly likely that activities involved in these cases, rise to the level of criminal violations. And THAT is what the participants and the Dems fear. That is the reason for the stonewalling, political pressure and the Mueller investigation. To protect the high level members of the Obama administration who are, potentially, looking at being indicted and convicted of criminal violations.
You have to look at the big picture and not get blinded by minutia. All Presidential administrations have some scandals. It is politics and some people will always step out of line. The Obama Administrations were scandal after scandal after scandal, some criminal. But, the media largely refused to cover them. The rot started at the top and spread downward, through the government. And, the Democrats, liberals and Progressives, as well as the Washington Establishment is doing everything that it can to protect the members of the Obama Administrations.
Listening to Strzok and giving him the benefit of every doubt, we are left with the fact that the FBI conducted a sham investigation into Clinton and that two years later we have seen no foundation for allegations of collusion between Russia and the Trump campaign. It is time for Mueller to lay his cards on the table and for the FBI to open the books.
As to the Russians, what the public knows about their activities is disproportionate to the threat Strzok claims to have perceived two years ago. Again, it is time for Mueller to wrap it up.
The comments at Huff Post claim that Stryk meant the people, the voters, would stop Trump from becoming president… and they believe that 100 percent. Sad and scary…
Of course, Strzok’s convenient difficulty using simple words to express what he really means is laughable
Radio host to journalist this morning: Who are the winners and losers from this hearing?
Journalist: A tie (however, more sound bites critical of R’s)
Me: No, the American citizens are the losers for this lie to have gotten this far. True colors on display that shows how gullible the elites, the swamp, the MSM think we are. 🙁
Spot on. The Republicans appear to be no better. I didn’t feel they were drilling down for any reason that to provide optics and talking points for the next election.
Was Strozk even placed under oath?
The American public want heads to roll, not another campaign advert on why you should vote Republican.
At least he seems well qualified for the human relations department.
Strzok exposed himself as a pathological criminal.
His very presence indicates that the institutional decay at FBI is beyond repair.
Shut down FBI.
Frankly, Strzok isn’t the one that disgusted me at this hearing. He’s a smug little political weasel that was fucking somebody other than his wife at the same time he was trying to fuck half of America.
But no, what really disgusted me was Gowdy and the Republicans. This was just bullshit political theatre for them.
Either DO SOMETHING ABOUT IT or shut your fucking mouth, Gowdy. 18 months later and Strzok still has a job. What a shock he’s a smug, condescending asshole. He KNOWS nothing is going to happen to him.
The GOP is the GOPe: bullsh-t.
We need to dump Sessions, and get an AG working on mass prosecutions.
The GOP is the GOPe: bullsh-t.
We need to dump Sessions, and get an AG working on mass prosecutions.
How do i get an invitation to the ceremony when he receives his (democrat) Purple Heart?
Strzok is Sessions.
Sessions is Strzok.
I can think of few characters as strikingly different from one another as Sessions and Strzok.