Former FBI agent Peter Strzok on Wednesday said former President Trump and others “successfully chilled the FBI’s willingness to investigate anything” Trump-related, complicating later inquiries into the former president’s classified document handling.
Strzok took to Twitter to comment on new reporting from the Washington Post that FBI agents and Department of Justice prosecutors squabbled over how aggressively to criminally investigate Trump’s handling of classified documents, including whether to conduct a surprise search of his Florida residence.
“Trump, [Attorney General William] Barr, [special counsel John] Durham, and others successfully chilled the FBI’s willingness to investigate anything related to Trump. The FBI handled Trump with unprecedented kid gloves, afraid to follow the facts for fear of political blowback, delaying the investigation for months,” Strzok argued.
The FBI executed a search warrant of Trump’s Mar-a-Lago residence and recovered more than a hundred classified materials this summer, but the Post article suggests some agents wanted to cut off the criminal investigation into Trump’s document handling beforehand, after Trump’s team had said they turned over all the materials.
“How’d that work out? Oh, right, Trump still had 100+ docs,” Strzok said.
Strzok highlighted a section of the article that contends the FBI agents were cautious in their treatment of the Trump case because of “damaging” mistakes in prior probes of Hillary Clinton.
“Really? Name one. I’ll wait,” Strzok said.
The former FBI agent said the Washington Post article “points to a damning fear in the FBI stemming from political fear, not from fact.”
Strzok was fired from the FBI amid an investigation into Trump’s ties to Russia, after text messages were uncovered between him and former FBI attorney Lisa Page, discussing Trump critically during the 2016 election. Strzok sued over his termination, arguing it was politically motivated, and a judge ruled last week that the former president and former FBI Director Christopher Wray can be deposed in his case.
Strzok in his Wednesday Twitter thread knocked the suggestion that some FBI agents were “simply afraid” that investigating Trump could harm their careers.
“You know what would go a long way to erasing that fear? Leadership that protected agents from political blowback, allowing them to do their job,” he said.