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Summary: FBI agent Peter Strzok faced House Republicans about his alleged anti-Trump bias.Â
On Thursday, FBI agent Peter Strzok was grilled by House Republicans, who set out to determine whether or not he was biased towards President Donald Trump during the Hillary Clinton email investigation and the Russia probe.
Strzok was caught sending anti-Trump texts, and House Republicans wanted to know if his feelings towards the president influenced his work.
CNN described the hearing as “a charged and chaotic affair with repeated outbursts and shouting matches between lawmakers and several heated and, at times, deeply personal exchanges between the Strzok and congressional Republicans.” Strzok was adamant that he had been fair during his investigations and that at no time did his anti-Trump feelings affect his work.
“At no time in any of these texts did those personal beliefs ever enter into the realm of any action I took,” Strzok said. “The suggestion that I’m in some dark chamber somewhere in the FBI would somehow cast aside all of these procedures, all of these safeguards, and somehow be able to do this is astounding to me — it simply couldn’t happen.”
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Despite Strzok’s denials, Republicans held firm that the FBI agent was biased towards Clinton and against Trump. They cited his texts with ex-FBI agent Lisa Page, whom he was having an affair with.
“The moment special counsel Bob Mueller found out about Peter Strzok’s text and emails he kicked him off of the investigation,” said House Oversight Committee Chairman Trey Gowdy. “But that was a year and a half too late. The text and emails may have been discovered in May of 2017, but the bias existed and was manifest a year and a half before that. All the way back to late 2015 and early 2016. So it wasn’t the discovery of texts that got him fired, it was the bias manifest in those texts that made him unfit to objectively and dispassionately investigate.”
After the discovery of the Strzok-Page texts, Strzok was removed from special counsel Robert Mueller’s Russia investigation. Trump has repeatedly cited Strzok as an example that political forces were behind the probe, which has so far resulted in the indictment of several members of the president’s inner circle.
During Thursday’s hearing, things got ugly for Strzok when Representative Louie Gohmert got personal and asked how the adulterous FBI agent dealt with his wife.
“I’ve talked to FBI agents around the country. You’ve embarrassed them; you’ve embarrassed yourself,” Gohmert said. “And I can’t help but wonder, when I see you looking there with a little smirk, how many times did you look so innocent into your wife’s eye and lie to her about Lisa Page?”
Gohmert was immediately shut down by Representative David Cicilline of Rhode Island who said that the question was harassment.
Instead of letting the line of questioning deter him, however, Strzok shot back at Gohmert’s character.
“The fact that you would question whether or not that was the sort of look I would engage with a family member who I have acknowledged hurting, goes more to a discussion about your character and what you stand for and what is going inside you,” Strzok said.
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