Strzok attorney pushes back against ‘critically flawed’ IG report

FBI agent Peter Strzok’s attorney on Thursday hit back against the newly released report from the Justice Department’s internal watchdog, calling its findings “critically flawed.”

“The report is critically flawed in its bizarre conclusion that the IG cannot rule out ‘with confidence’ the possibility that Special Agent Strzok’s political ‘bias’ may have been a cause of the FBI’s failure, between September 29 and October 25, 2016, to seek a second search warrant for the Anthony Weiner laptop,” Strzok’s attorney, Aitan Goelman, said in a statement.

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Goelman goes on to say that the report actually shows “indisputable evidence” that Strzok acted appropriately.

“In fact, all facts contained in the report lead to the conclusion that the delay was caused by a variety of factors and miscommunications that had nothing to do with Special Agent Strzok’s political views. The report itself provides indisputable evidence that, when informed that Weiner’s laptop contained Clinton emails, Strzok immediately had the matter pursued by two of his most qualified and aggressive investigators.”

Text messages in the highly anticipated report show that Strzok, who worked as a top investigator in the probes into former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton‘s use of a private email server and Russian meddling in the 2016 presidential election, worked in 2016 to reassure lawyer Lisa Page that President Trump would not be elected. 

“[Trump’s] not ever going to become president, right? Right?!” Page asked in a text to Strzok in August 2016.

“No. No he won’t. We’ll stop it,” Strzok responded.

The report said the text exchange was “indicative of a biased state of mind” — and implied that Strzok may have purposefully slow-rolled the review of emails connected to the Clinton investigation discovered after the probe was closed, which were on former New York Rep. Anthony Weiner’s (D) laptop.

Strzok and Page were both removed from special counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation into Russian election meddling over the text messages last year. 

The report found that their conversations negatively affected public perception of the special counsel’s office. 

“The conduct by these employees cast a cloud over the entire FBI investigation,” the report said. 

Trump and Republicans have pounced on the exchange, saying it proves there is bias against the president in the Mueller investigation and the federal government.