by Adam Shaw6 Dec 2017565

Here’s what you need to know about Strzok:
Strzok Was Demoted Over the Texts
Strzok, who the New York Times reported is “considered one of the most experienced and trusted F.B.I. counterintelligence investigators” and was a top investigator in Mueller’s Russia probe, was demoted to a human resources position after the discovery of the texts — which were sent to an FBI lawyer with whom he was having an extramarital affair.
Strzok Was Involved in Softening Comey’s Language on Clinton’s Email Use
CNN reported that Strzok was involved in changing the language FBI Director James Comey used in his July 2016 statement to describe Hillary Clinton’s handling of classified information. The language was reportedly changed from “grossly negligent” to “extremely careless.”
The subsequent language is softer and therefore was less damaging to Clinton — who was at that time locked in a bruising presidential campaign with then-candidate Donald Trump. CNN noted that federal law carries penalties for gross negligence in the handling of classified material.
Strzok Interviewed Michael Flynn, Top Clinton Aides
Strzok was reportedly involved in the interviews of Michael Flynn in January for the probe into Russian interference, as well as Clinton aides Huma Abedin and Cheryl Mills concerning the Clinton email scandal.
Those interviews are now being scrutinized as Flynn was charged for lying during that interview about his contacts with Russian officials, but Abedin and Mills were not charged for saying they did not know about Clinton’s private email server until 2013 — when there were emails from earlier suggesting they do.
Strzok’s roles in both interviews have stoked concerns about bias and double standards in the FBI’s probes.
Strzok Is Not the Only One
Strzok is not the only agent accused of having a left-leaning bias. Documents obtained by Judicial Watch show that the prosecutor now serving as Mueller’s top deputy sent an email in January gushing over then-Acting Attorney General Sally Yates’ refusal to enforce President Trump’s travel ban.
“I am so proud. And in awe. Thank you so much. All my deepest respects,” said Andrew Weissman in the email, one of a number of supportive emails Yates received from DOJ colleagues.
Congress Wants Answers
Strzok’s potential bias has caught the attention of Republicans in Congress. Rep. Peter King (R-NY) toldthe New York Post Tuesday that he and fellow members of the House Intelligence Committee want to review Strzok’s “text messages, e-mails and contacts.”
They also want to know his impact on the findings of the investigation into Clinton’s email use and why he was questioning Michael Flynn. He also said the FBI and Justice Department have been “stonewalling” them.
“I think we should definitely question him. In fact, he’s one of the people we’ve been trying to get information on for the last several months,” King said.
Adam Shaw is a Breitbart News politics reporter based in New York. Follow Adam on Twitter: @AdamShawNY.

WASHINGTON — House conservatives plan to press FBI Director Christopher Wray on Thursday about revelations that a top agent was demoted for anti-Trump text messages — an incident the lawmakers charge proves bias against the president in the Russia investigation.
But while that will make for a confrontational hearing between Wray and the House Judiciary Committee, legal experts say Congress is unlikely to take action to derail special counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation of Russian meddling in the 2016 presidential election.
Rep. Matt Gaetz, R-Fla., a member of the Judiciary Committee, said at a news conference with five other GOP lawmakers Wednesday that President Trump has been subjected to “the unprecedented bias against (him) that exists when we allow people who hate the president to participate in the investigations against him.”
“People who actively dislike the president were assigned to work against him,” said Gaetz, adding later in an interview that he believes FBI agent Peter Strzok should have been fired rather than being moved from Mueller’s team to the bureau’s human resources department.
Strzok — a top counter-intelligence agent who also helped run the investigation into Hillary Clinton’s use of a private email server while she was secretary of State — was abruptly reassigned this summerafter the inspector general for the Department of Justice discovered text messages between him and another FBI official that allegedly contained anti-Trump statements.
The existence of the messages were revealed Saturday in news reports, but the full text of the messages has not been disclosed.
Rep. Andy Biggs, R-Ariz., a member of the committee, said he will press Wray on what he sees as the FBI’s bias in favor of Clinton and against Trump. Conservatives believe the FBI let Clinton off easy last year when former director James Comey concluded that she was “extremely careless” in her handling of classified emails but did not commit any crime, language that Strzok was reportedly involved in drafting.
Wray took over as FBI director in late September after Trump fired Comey in May.
“One of the questions that needs to be answered is why are the same people that have mishandled and provided bias to the Hillary Clinton investigation over time, why are they still in this administration?” Biggs said at Wednesday’s news conference.
Conservatives also renewed their call Wednesday for Attorney General Jeff Sessions to appoint a special prosecutor to investigate the FBI’s handling of the Clinton case. Sessions, in testimony before the House Judiciary Committee last month, said he has directed senior federal prosecutors to evaluate Republican members’ requests for a special counsel.
The Department of Justice’s inspector general is already conducting an investigation of the FBI’s handling of the Clinton email case. Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein is expected to testify before the House Judiciary Committee next week, and will undoubtedly be asked about that probe.
House Intelligence Chairman Devin Nunes, R-Calif., has threatened to have his committee vote on a contempt of Congress resolution against Wray and Rosenstein in the wake of the news about Strzok. He said the FBI and the Department of Justice hid the information from Congress for months “in a willful attempt to thwart Congress’ constitutional oversight responsibility.”

The Department of Justice has denied that and said officials are cooperating with the committee’s investigation and will continue to do so.
Democrats say Republicans are just trying to divert attention away from Mueller’s investigation into possible collusion between the Trump campaign and the Kremlin and possible obstruction of justice by Trump.
Mueller’s probe recently resulted in two indictments and two guilty pleas from Trump associates — including a guilty plea from former national security adviser Michael Flynn for lying to the FBI about his communications with the Russian ambassador.
As of Wednesday, Nunes had not yet announced whether he planned to bring the contempt resolution to a vote in his committee.
The problem for lawmakers in pointing to the Strzok case as evidence of bias in the overall Russia investigation is that Mueller demoted the agent as soon as he was informed about the questionable text messages, legal experts said.
“I think that Mueller bent over backwards to be ‘purer than Caesar’s wife’ in letting him (Strzok) go,” said Charles Tiefer, a professor at the University of Baltimore School of Law and the special deputy chief counsel for the House Iran-Contra Committee’s investigation of the Reagan administration.
Nunes may be angry that the Department of Justice didn’t clear Strzok until a few days ago to testify before his committee, but that’s not a basis for contempt of Congress, Tiefer said.
Congress can only hold people in contempt if they are currently withholding testimony or documents, Tiefer said. They can’t go after them for a slow response, he said.
“If you could charge every official who was behind schedule in responding to Congress with contempt, you would have to line them all up at the D.C. stadium,” the professor said.
It’s also unlikely that House leaders would bring a contempt of Congress resolution to a vote of the full House even if it passed the committee, he said.
“The stance of congressional leaders so far has been ‘let justice be done,’ ” Tiefer said. “There are more indictments ahead. Congressional leadership is not going to want to look like they are fighting those.”
Andrew Wright, an associate professor at Savannah Law School in Georgia and former staff director of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, said Congress has the power to withhold funds from Mueller’s investigation.
Mueller’s investigation has cost taxpayers at least $3.2 million so far, according to Justice Department records released Tuesday.
But Wright said any effort by Republicans to cut off funding to the investigation would never pass the Senate, where Democrats have the power to block such a move. Besides, the Mueller investigation allows GOP leaders to focus on tax policy, health care and other issues instead of having to answer endless questions about the Russia investigation, he said.
“(House Speaker) Paul Ryan is benefiting from the fact that the Mueller investigation gives him an out from talking about Russia at every press conference,” Wright said. “He can say ‘the special counsel is handling that’ and move on to the next question.”
More: House Intel chairman threatens FBI director, deputy AG with contempt of Congress
More: Rod Rosenstein, deputy attorney general, defends Justice Department in wake of Trump criticism
More: President Trump defends Michael Flynn for lying to FBI by claiming Hillary Clinton did the same thing

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FBI and DOJ. These two agencies are making the rounds today on social media like wildfire is a press release that went largely unnoticed in January.
Who or what is being investigated? According to the release, “the Office of the Inspector General (OIG) will initiate a review of allegations regarding certain actions by the Department of Justice (Department) and the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) in advance of the 2016 election.”
Stronger together?
Here’s the press release from January:
Now that you’ve read that document, consider these recent tweets, one from Eric ‘Contempt of Congress’ Holder, responding to President Trump’s remarks about the “FBI being in tatters.” How well will these age?
Also under review – How Mueller’s secret firing of Peter Strzok, who is apparently very anti-Trump and had involvement in both the Clinton email scandal and the Fusion GPS dossier.
Yesterday, a bombshell dropped about Strzok – he interviewed Flynn:

FBI agent Peter Strzok was one of two FBI agents who interviewed Flynn, which took place on Jan. 24, at the White House, said several sources. The other FBI special agent, who interviewed Flynn, is described by sources as a field supervisor in the “Russian Squad, at the FBI’s Washington Field Office,” according to a former intelligence official, with knowledge of the interview.

But there was more. Now the interview itself is being called into question due to Strzok’s involvement:

The former U.S. intelligence official told this reporter, “with the recent revelation that Strzok was removed from the Special Counsel investigation for making anti-Trump text messages it seems likely that the accuracy and veracity of the 302 of Flynn’s interview as a whole should be reviewed and called into question.”
“The most logical thing to happen would be to call the other FBI Special Agent present during Flynn’s interview before the Grand Jury to recount his version,” the former intelligence official added.
The former official also said that “Strzok’s allegiance to (Deputy Director Andrew) McCabe was unwavering and very well known.”

The hits keep coming with Strzok as the Daily Caller reported: Embattled FBI supervisor Peter Strzok also conducted the interviews with Huma Abedin and Cheryl Mills, in which they falsely claimed they didn’t know about Hillary’s email server when she was Secretary of State.
And there’s the allegations by former Intelligence Community Inspector General Charles McCullough about the Clinton email scandal.
McCullough told FOX news’ Tucker Carlson that that the Clinton email probe was politicized and that his office was systematically attacked and marginalized by Democrats.
Let that sink in, the information in Clinton’s emails would have brought,”…harm to National Security.”
Remember, Clinton has maintained nothing in her emails was classified. That is, the emails remaining on her private server which she used ‘bleachbit‘ on to destroy evidence.
Judicial Watch has already produced proof that Clinton did have classified material on her servers and that material was forwarded to Clinton Foundation employees.
Judicial Watch found even more classified emails recently in a cache of Clinton emails (72,000) that the FBI collected during the email scandal and finally turned over to the watchdog group.
Stay tuned. Things are likely going to get very interesting, likely in January since the IG has said they are ‘close’ to making their report.

A photo of Peter Strzok, the top FBI agent who was removed from the Robert Mueller investigation, has finally been revealed. For days, the lack of any images or pictures of Strzok, 47, led to rampant speculation online.
Fox News was the first media outlet to obtain a picture of Strzok, in what looks like an official FBI photo. It shows Strzok in suit-and-tie positioned in front of an American flag. Here’s the photo:
You can read the original Fox News article that revealed the photo of Strzok here. The article alleges that “Strzok, a former deputy to the assistant director for counterintelligence at the FBI, oversaw the bureau’s interviews with ousted National Security Adviser Michael Flynn, changed former FBI Director James Comey’s early draft language about Hillary Clinton’s actions regarding her private email server from ‘grossly negligent’ to ‘extremely careless’ and reportedly helped push the largely unverified dossier on Trump that was initially prepared by Fusion GPS for the Clinton campaign’s opposition research.”
The picture obtained by Fox News is the only image to emerge of Strzok, who doesn’t appear to have a social media presence.
The claims of political bias exploded after it was revealed that Mueller had quietly reassigned Strzok because of text messages that Strzok is accused of sending to an FBI lawyer disparaging Donald Trump and showing support for Hillary Clinton. The specific wording of the messages has not been revealed. Strzok is married to a top SEC lawyer named Melissa Hodgman.
“Bosses discovered he and another member of Mueller’s team had exchanged politically charged texts disparaging President Trump and supporting Hillary Clinton,” The Washington Post reported. According to The Washington Post, during the Clinton investigation, “Strzok was involved in a romantic relationship with FBI lawyer Lisa Page, who worked for Deputy Director Andrew McCabe.” McCabe himself has been criticized because his wife received money from groups with alliances to Clinton.
According to Newsweek, “It’s true that for her campaign, Jill McCabe received a total of $675,288 from two entities associated with McAuliffe: a political action committee and the Virginia Democratic Party.” She was running for Virginia’s senate at the time. “McAuliffe is a longtime friend of Hillary and Bill Clinton,” reported Newsweek.
Strzok exchanged messages with Page that helped lead to his ouster from the Mueller team, the Post reported. “Of greater concern among senior law enforcement officials were text messages the two exchanged during the Clinton investigation and campaign season in which they expressed anti-Trump sentiments and other comments that appeared to favor Clinton,” according to the newspaper.
The allegations of political bias engulfing Strzok are not the only such claims to hit the Mueller team. t least nine of the lawyers on special prosecutor Robert Mueller’s Russia investigation team of 16 attorneys donated to Democrats, with most giving money to either the campaigns of Barack Obama or Hillary Clinton, a review of Federal Election Commission records shows.
Seven other lawyers on the team do not have previous federal campaign donations, a review of FEC records shows, and Mueller himself has served in the administrations of both Republican and Democratic presidents (and was a registered Republican in the past). None of the 16 lawyers on his team is listed as donating money to President Donald Trump’s campaign or to the presidential campaigns of any past Republicans, although one donated to two Republicans in non-presidential races in addition to giving more money to Hillary Clinton, Barack Obama, and a string of Democrats.
You can read more about the Mueller team’s campaign donations here:

You can read more about Melissa Hodgman, Peter Strzok’s wife, here:

Yes, President Trump doesn’t help himself when he Tweets, “After years of Comey, with the phony and dishonest Clinton investigation (and more), running the FBI, its reputation is in Tatters – worst in History!”
But criticism of a particular FBI decision, or a series of decisions by the bureau’s leadership, does not mean one is attacking the entire institution as a whole. (Otherwise, every critic of J. Edgar Hoover is “attacking the FBI.”) But while the FBI’s reputation might be overall in good shape, the public faith in the decision-making of former director James Comey during the 2016 campaign isn’t in good shape. Many Hillary Clinton fans thought the investigation into her e-mails was a witch hunt; many Republicans thought Comey’s press conference lamenting her “extremely careless” handling of classified information amounted to a slap on the wrist. Hillary herself blames Comey for her defeat; that’s obviously overwrought, but there’s no getting around the fact that the FBI ended up making enormously consequential decisions that no doubt helped shape the outcome of the presidential election.
And now there’s some evidence that some voices at the top of the FBI weren’t so nonpartisan and independent after all:

A former top counterintelligence expert at the FBI, now at the center of a political uproar for exchanging private messages that appeared to mock President Donald Trump, changed a key phrase in former FBI Director James Comey’s description of how former secretary of state Hillary Clinton handled classified information, according to US officials familiar with the matter.
Electronic records show Peter Strzok, who led the investigation of Hillary Clinton’s private email server as the No. 2 official in the counterintelligence division, changed Comey’s earlier draft language describing Clinton’s actions as “grossly negligent” to “extremely careless,” the source said.
The drafting process was a team effort, CNN is told, with a handful of people reviewing the language as edits were made, according to another US official familiar with the matter.
The shift from “grossly negligent” to “extremely careless,” which may appear pedestrian at first glance, reflected a decision by the FBI that could have had potentially significant legal implications, as the federal law governing the mishandling of classified material establishes criminal penalties for “gross negligence.”

Is Peter Strzok a partisan hack? His friends and colleagues will probably say “no,” and the Trump administration will say “yes.” But the fact that he was sending around ”politically charged texts disparaging President Trump and supporting Hillary Clinton” is not encouraging. By doing that, he’s given Trump and his defenders all the ammunition they need to argue that Clinton’s non-criminal consequences amounted to a whitewash, and that the Bureau’s continuing investigation into the administration is, at least in part, driven by a partisan vendetta.
And just how good is this guy’s judgment if he’s sending pro-Hillary text messages while he’s investigating her?