FBI counterintelligence agent Peter Strzok will face hostile questions from Republicans on Thursday when he appears before the House Judiciary and Oversight committees for a public hearing.
In his first public hearing since the Department of Justice inspector general released a report outlining his anti-Trump texts to his FBI lawyer mistress, GOP lawmakers will be looking hard for signs that Strzok's bias swayed decisions he made in the FBI's investigations of Hillary Clinton and then-candidate Donald Trump.
The IG report acknowledged his bias and other biases in the FBI, but said none of them had an impact on the outcome of either the investigation into Hillary Clinton's private email server or the probe into Trump's alleged collusion with Russia to win the 2016 election. Republicans will be looking to refute that finding.
There's some small chance that Strzok will be joined by Lisa Page, a former FBI lawyer with whom he was having an extramarital affair while the two worked on the Clinton and Trump investigations.
Page defied a subpoena to appear before the two committees on Wednesday, and Republican lawmakers said she can appear Thursday alongside her former lover, appear behind closed doors at 10 a.m. Friday, or be held in contempt of Congress that day. It wasn't immediately clear which path Page would take.
Experts say the hearing poses a real danger to Strzok, who runs the risk of being tripped up in public testimony.
The hearing "is fraught with peril for [Strzok], and quite possibly the motivation behind former FBI attorney Lisa Page's decision not to appear for an interview with House lawmakers," retired FBI supervisory special agent and current CNN law enforcement analyst James Gagliano told the Washington Examiner.
The IG report, released in June, heavily criticized text messages sent between Strzok and Page, including one in which the former assured the latter that "we'll stop" Trump from becoming president. The report said it found no evidence that bias swayed any internal decisions, in large part because neither Strzok nor Page ever acted alone when making decisions.
But Gagliano said the challenge for Strzok is making sure his public statements match those he might have given to his superiors and the IG.
"With the IG report appearing to clear Strzok, Page, and [former] Deputy Director Andrew McCabe of any wrongdoing related to their possible political biases infecting investigations, their concerns now must be related to potential conflicting testimony," Gagliano said of GOP lawmakers.
Edited by
mightymoe
on Fri 07/13/18 07:42 AM