Former FBI official Peter Strzok is willing to testify voluntarily before Congress in an effort \u201cto clear his name,\u201d his attorney says. \u201cSpecial Agent\u2026<\/b>
\nFormer FBI official Peter Strzok is willing to testify voluntarily before Congress in an effort \u201cto clear his name,\u201d his attorney says.
\u201cSpecial Agent Strzok, who has been fully cooperative with the [Department of Justice] Office of Inspector General, intends to voluntarily appear and testify before your committee and any other Congressional committee that invites him,\u201d a lawyer for Strzok, Aitan Goelman, said in a letter sent Saturday to House Judiciary Committee Chairman Bob Goodlatte.
Goodlatte on Friday informed Democrats on the Judiciary committee of his plans to subpoena Strzok to testify before the panel about his role in both the Hillary Clinton email investigation and the Trump-Russia probe.
As the FBI\u2019s deputy chief of counterintelligence, Strzok was the bureau\u2019s lead investigator on \u201cCrossfire Hurricane,\u201d the investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 presidential campaign.
He was also one of the top investigators on the Hillary Clinton email probe.
Strzok worked on Special Counsel Robert Mueller\u2019s team until last July. He was removed from the investigation after the Justice Department\u2019s inspector general discovered anti-Trump text messages that Strzok exchanged with FBI attorney Lisa Page. (RELATED: FBI Agent\u2019s Anti-Trump Text Was Missing From Earlier Document Productions)
A report from the inspector general released Thursday blasted Strzok and Page over their anti-Trump text messages.
The report revealed one text message that had not previously been released.
\u201c[Trump\u2019s] not ever going to become president, right? Right?!\u201d Page wrote to Strzok in an Aug. 9,2016 text message.
\u201cNo. No he\u2019s not. We\u2019ll stop it,\u201d Strzok replied.
The text message was missing from the Justice Department\u2019s production of Strzok-Page documents previously sent to Congress. The inspector general\u2019s investigators recovered the exchange last month.
The inspector general\u2019s report said that the text message \u201cis not only indicative of a biased state of mind but, even more seriously, implies a willingness to take official action to impact the presidential candidate\u2019s electoral prospects.\u201d
\u201cThis is antithetical to the core values of the FBI and the Department of Justice,\u201d the report reads.
Goelman told The Washington Post that there was \u201cno question\u201d that Strzok regrets sending the text messages. But he said he believed Strzok was \u201cexpressing his political opinions in what he thought was a private text conversation, and he regrets that this has been weaponized by people with political motivations to try to discredit the Mueller investigation.\u201d
\u201cHe thinks that his position, character and actions have all been misrepresented and caricatured, and he wants an opportunity to remedy that,\u201d Goelman told The Post of Strzok\u2019s willingness to testify to Congress.
The lawyer said that Strzok \u201cintends to answer any question put to him, and he intends to defend the integrity of the Clinton email investigation, the Russia collusion investigation to the extent that that\u2019s a topic, and his own integrity.\u201d (RELATED: Strzok: \u2018We\u2019ll Stop\u2019 Trump Presidency)
Strzok \u201cwants the chance to clear his name and tell his story,\u201d said Goelman, who is a partner at the firm Zuckerman Spaeder.
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