by WorldTribune Staff / 247 Real News May 30, 2024
The Biden Department of Justice has agreed to settle long-running litigation stemming from a decision in 2017 to release to the media text messages between FBI employees Peter Strzok and Lisa Page, who were involved in the Crossfire Hurricane investigation aimed at Donald Trump’s 2016 presidential campaign and subsequent administration.
The messages showed Strzok and Page, who were engaged in an extramarital affair, were rabid anti-Trumpers who said that Hillary Clinton deserved to win in 2016 by a huge margin. In one message, Strzok referred to the FBI’s Russia investigation as “an insurance policy” if Trump defeated Clinton.
News of the couple’s messages helped create growing public awareness of pro-Democrat politicization at high levels of the U.S. Department of Justice and Intelligence Community that critics charge led to interference in the U.S. presidential elections of both 2016 and 2020.
A 26-page letter sent at the time by Candice Will, the FBI’s assistant director at the Office of Professional Responsibility harshly criticized, among many things, the hundreds of Strzok-Page texts showing political bias against Trump and in favor of Clinton.
“The lapses in judgment embodied in those messages and others like them risked undermining public confidence in two of the Bureau’s highest-profile investigations,” the DOJ said in a 151-page motion to dismiss the wrongful termination lawsuit Strzok filed in August 2019. “And even more broadly, those lapses in judgment risked damaging the public trust in the FBI as a nonpartisan, even-handed, and effective law enforcement institution — trust that is essential to the FBI’s ability to vigorously enforce the nation’s laws without fear or favor.”
After October 2020, Strzok worked as an adjunct professor at Georgetown University’s School of Foreign Service.
In a notice filed with two federal judges in Washington, D.C. on Tuesday, the DOJ said it had reached settlements of legal claims that Strzok and Page brought in 2019 alleging that the disclosure violated their privacy.
Until Tuesday, the DOJ had denied liability and fought the claims in both suits. Efforts to resolve the cases through mediation have been underway for at least six months.
The terms of the settlements were not disclosed in the notice, which said Strzok’s claims that his firing violated his First Amendment and due process rights are not resolved by the agreement. That litigation, alleging that the FBI caved to political pressure from Trump to fire Strzok just before he was eligible for full retirement pay, is ongoing.
In February 2020, Judicial Watch announced it received a production of emails between Strzok and Page that show their direct involvement in the opening of Crossfire Hurricane, the bureau’s investigation of alleged collusion between the Trump campaign and Russia.
Last fall, Trump was ordered to sit for a limited deposition after a federal judge overseeing fact-finding in the cases — U.S. District Judge Amy Berman Jackson — agreed he might have relevant information.
The DOJ attempted to prevent the deposition, urging Jackson to reconsider her decision and asking the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals to block it. But both Jackson and the appellate judges rejected the department’s efforts, and Trump ultimately sat for a short deposition in New York.
A DOJ spokesperson declined comment on the settlement. Page’s attorney, Lisa Page, and a lawyer for Strzok, Aitan Goelman, had no immediate comment.
Biden’s DOJ settles lawsuits with Trump-hating FBI lovebirds Peter Strzok and Lisa Page added by Editor Two on
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