WASHINGTON — A federal judge has thrown out a former FBI agent’s claims that he was illegally fired after sending disparaging text messages to a colleague about President Donald Trump.
Peter Strzok, a former top counterintelligence agent who played a crucial role in the investigation into Russian election interference in 2016, alleged in a federal lawsuit that the FBI caved to “unrelenting pressure” from Trump when it fired him and that he was unfairly punished for expressing his political opinions.
U.S. District Judge Amy Berman Jackson on Tuesday rejected Strzok’s claim that his August 2018 firing violated his First Amendment free speech rights. The judge concluded that the FBI’s interest in avoiding the appearance of bias in an ongoing investigation outweighed Strzok’s interest in expressing his opinions about political candidates on his FBI phone.
Jackson also said Strzok didn’t present any evidence that the FBI treated him more harshly than they would have treated somebody in similar circumstances because Trump was the subject of his critical text messages.
“Each of the FBI officials deposed maintained that given plaintiff’s rank and his role in the two investigations, and the appearance of bias that permeated the messages, the situation was unprecedented, and there were no comparators,” she wrote.
Strzok’s attorneys didn’t immediately respond Wednesday to an email seeking comment.
The Justice Department had sought to block the suit by asking a judge to rule in the government’s favor without a trial, saying in a court filing last year that Strzok was fired based “solely on his misconduct and its impact on the FBI.”
“The reason for Peter Strzok’s dismissal from the FBI is clear and not subject to genuine dispute: the FBI dismissed Mr. Strzok because he exchanged politically charged text messages on his FBI-issued device about individuals who were centrally connected to high-profile investigations,” government lawyers wrote in court filings.
Strzok, who helped lead FBI investigations into Hillary Clinton’s use of a private email server and ties between the 2016 Trump campaign and Russia, was removed from special counsel Robert Mueller’s team in 2017 after texts with FBI lawyer Lisa Page were discovered by the Justice Department’s office of inspector general.
Many of the texts, on FBI-issued cell phones, were bitingly critical of Trump as he ran for president in 2016 and included insults like “idiot” and “loathsome human.”
Trump has for years pointed to the messages to advance his argument that the FBI was biased against him and that the Russia investigation was driven by political animus, all the while lambasting Strzok and Page by name on social media and even suggesting that Strzok should be charged with “treason.” Strzok has denied that his political opinions influenced his work or investigative decisions.
Last year, the two settled with the Justice Department over separate claims arising from the department’s decision to leak the text messages to reporters. They alleged that the disclosures were meant to promote a false narrative of anti-Trump bias within the FBI and to elevate the department’s status with Trump after his relentless attacks on then-Attorney General Jeff Sessions.
