Strzok Speaks

Or promises to, anyway. Peter Strzok’s lawyer says there is no need to subpoena him, he will testify voluntarily before the House Judiciary Committee and any other committee that will have him. And he won’t plead the Fifth, either:

The FBI agent who was removed from the investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 election for sending anti-Trump texts intends to testify before the House Judiciary Committee and any other congressional committee that asks, his attorney said in a letter made public Sunday.

Peter Strzok, who was singled out in a recent Justice Department inspector general report for the politically charged messages, would be willing to testify without immunity, and he would not invoke his Fifth Amendment rights in response to any question, his attorney, Aitan Goelman, said in an interview Sunday.
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Goelman said Strzok “wants the chance to clear his name and tell his story.”

“He thinks that his position, character and actions have all been misrepresented and caricatured, and he wants an opportunity to remedy that,” the lawyer said.

That’s a tough sell. Speaking for myself, my opinion of Strzok’s character and actions is based entirely on his own words.

[Goelman] said there was “no question” that Strzok regrets sending anti-Trump messages, but added: “I think what he was doing is expressing 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.”

Chutzpah has been redefined.

Goelman said that Strzok was not willing to use his official position to affect Trump’s chances of being elected and that “his political conviction that a Trump presidency would be disastrous for American national security is not based on his bias, it was based on information that was available to him, and his perspective on American national security.”

So this is what he will tell the House Judiciary Committee. No doubt the Democrats will be salivating to find out what “information…was available to him” that convinced Strzok that Trump had to be stopped.

He said Strzok did not do the one thing that might have helped Clinton and hurt Trump: leak word of the investigation of the Trump campaign.

But someone leaked the fact that the FBI was investigating the Trump campaign, and the FBI colluded with the CIA to ensure that the fake “dossier,” paid for by the Hillary Clinton campaign and the DNC, would be made public shortly before President Trump’s inauguration. Will Strzok testify under oath that he wasn’t one of the FBI leakers? That actually could be true: the DOJ Inspector General’s report says that there were so many FBI employees talking to reporters–contrary to the Agency’s alleged policy–that it was not possible to identify the leakers.

One way or another, Strzok’s testimony should be a major media event. The networks will have incentive to cover it, since Strzok will be denouncing the president and possibly revealing secrets about the FBI’s campaign against him. We might even see a mirror image of the Iran-Contra hearings of 1987. The networks covered those hearings and, if I remember correctly, broadcast portions of them live, thinking they might finally discredit the hated Reagan administration. But Lt. Col. Oliver North foiled their plans. As the star witness, he was a hero rather than a villain.

When Peter Strzok testifies, it will be the other way around. The press will be on his side, but will Americans buy his story? Doubtful. But one way or another, we could be in for some great theater.

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