On Tuesday, former President Donald Trump is set to be deposed in a case two former FBI employees brought against the Department of Justice (DOJ).
Peter Strzok and Lisa Page made headlines when texts between the two former FBI employees, who were also having an extramarital affair at the time, were revealed to show anti-Trump messages and bias. Mr. Strzok was leading the already contentious FBI investigation into ties between the former president’s first campaign and Russia, and Ms. Page was also assigned to the case.
Mr. Strzok was also a key agent in the investigation into former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s use of a private email server, in which evidence was destroyed.
Ms. Page, who had resigned from the agency, is suing the DOJ for disclosing her texts, and Mr. Strzok was fired months after Ms. Page resigned and is suing for wrongful termination. He claims the firing was political, while the agency claims it was proper given his “lapse of judgment” which was also evidenced in the texts.
The separate suits were combined, and both plaintiffs alleged that the DOJ was pressured by President Trump when they took action against the FBI employees. They noted that President Trump repeatedly invoked them in social media posts and had actually called for Mr. Strzok to be fired.
For two years, the DOJ has repeatedly argued that President Trump’s deposition is not necessary. They argued that several other witnesses have already testified as to President Trump’s role, and that was sufficient for the case.
President Trump on the other hand has said he is willing to testify in this case, and has lambasted the “Russia hoax” about his 2016 campaign publicly during his current campaign as he hopes to run for president again in 2024.
A judge, and appeals court, had ruled that President Trump could be deposed. U.S. District Judge Amy Berman Jackson, presiding over the case, noted that President Trump had made time for other cases despite his campaigning, and thus said he would have time to be deposed.
Peter Strzok
Mr. Strzok had been with the FBI for 25 years before he was terminated. In his lawsuit, Mr. Strzok claims that his political opinions in the revealed personal texts led to his firing in 2018, even after the officer in charge of the Office of Professional Responsibility had recommended a suspension and demotion rather than termination.The day after Mr. Strzok accepted this disciplinary decision, he was fired, effective immediately.
“The discharge decision was made by Deputy Director David Bowdich, and was the result of unrelenting pressure from President Trump and his political allies in Congress and the media,” his 2019 lawsuit read. “The campaign to fire Strzok included constant tweets and other disparaging statements by the President, as well as direct appeals from the President to then Attorney General Jefferson Sessions and FBI Director Christopher Wray to fire Strzok, which were chronicled in the press.”
He argued that the release of his texts only enabled the wrongful termination.
Several of the texts between Mr. Strzok and Ms. Page revealed deep bias, which officials and lawmakers claim colored the investigation into President Trump’s campaign. Mr. Strzok famously said they would “stop” him from becoming president, and had described him as “an idiot,” “disaster,” “abysmal,” among other negative descriptions.
”[Trump is] not ever going to become president, right? Right?!” Ms. Page wrote in one text.
“No. No he won’t. We’ll stop it,” Mr. Strzok responded.
In other texts, they discussed a “media leak strategy” with the DOJ to spread information about the president and his administration.
“It will make your head spin to realize how many stories we played a personal role in,” Ms. Page wrote to Mr. Strzok in 2016.
Afterward, the DOJ investigated the two, but the final report found no “political bias” or “improper considerations” in their work. However, the texts “cast a cloud over the entire FBI investigation,” the report noted.
In Mr. Stzrok’s lawsuit, he alleges the entire Trump administration was discriminatory as evidenced by the treatment of some of the president’s aides.
“The Trump Administration has consistently tolerated and even encouraged partisan political speech by federal employees, as long as this speech praises President Trump and attacks his political adversaries,” the lawsuit reads, arguing that high-profile staffers were allowed to “violate the Hatch Act with impunity,” suggesting they illegally participated in political activities as civil servants.
The government argued that the case should be dismissed, as Mr. Strzok was properly dismissed, and the texts were not illegally released.
In his key role in the two high-profile investigations, a “higher burden of caution” was imposed on him, and he failed to meet it, reads the government motion.
“It is because of those text messages, and the paramount importance of preserving the FBI’s ability to function as a trusted, nonpartisan institution, that Plaintiff was removed from his position, and not because of any alleged disagreement with Plaintiff’s viewpoints on political issues or Tweets from the President,” the filing reads.
“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.”
