Strzok Complains Durham Investigation ‘Never Should Have Taken Place’
In response to Special Counsel John Durham’s report released Monday, disgraced former FBI agent Peter Strzok expressed his belief that the investigation into the origins of the Russian Collusion hoax “never should have taken place.”
Strzok was fired after an internal investigation at the FBI found that he was exchanging “politically charged” text messages with his lover, FBI agent Lisa Page.
Strzok was the Deputy Assistant Director at the FBI at the time of the investigation into then-candidate Donald Trump’s supposed collusion with Russia — and was mentioned in the Durham report as one of the many members of the bureaucracy who helped to push the false claims.
In September 2016, the CIA sent a “referral memo” to Strzok and then-FBI Director James Comey about a plan that then-candidate Hillary Clinton’s campaign had concocted to smear Trump by convincing Americans that he was colluding with Russia.
“In late July 2016, U.S. intelligence agencies obtained insight into Russian intelligence analysis alleging that U.S Presidential candidate Hillary Clinton had approved a campaign plan to stir up a scandal against U.S. Presidential candidate Donald Trump by tying him to Putin and the Russians’ hacking of the Democratic National Committee,” the Durham report explains.
At the time, the intelligence was considered so important that then-CIA Director James Brennan immediately set up a briefing on the matter for President Barack Obama, Vice President Joe Biden and Attorney General Loretta Lynch, along with several others.
The “referral memo” was later given to Comey and Strzok, who initially led the Trump-Russia investigation. They were then charged with investigating whether the Clinton campaign had concocted the plan to smear Trump as a Russian agent “as a means of distracting the public from her use of a private mail server.”
Apparently, Comey and Strzok never turned the memo over to the team investigating Trump.
Durham explained in his report that, despite the importance of the CIA memo, it was never shown to investigators — writing that “none of the FBI personnel who agreed to be interviewed [for his investigation] could specifically recall receiving this Referral Memo, nor did anyone recall the FBI doing anything in response to the Referral Memo.”
In the report, the special counsel specifically cited an interview with a top FBI agent who became visibly angry and emotional that he had never been shown the memo.
“The Office showed portions of the Clinton Plan intelligence to a number of individuals who were actively involved in the Crossfire Hurricane investigation,” Durham wrote. “Most advised they had never seen the intelligence before, and some expressed surprise and dismay upon learning of it.”
“For example, the original Supervisory Special Agent on the Crossfire Hurricane investigation, Supervisory Special Agent-1, reviewed the intelligence during one of his interviews with the Office,” he continued. “After reading it, Supervisory Special Agent-I became visibly upset and emotional, left the interview room with his counsel, and subsequently returned to state emphatically that he had never been apprised of the Clinton Plan intelligence and had never seen the aforementioned Referral Memo. Supervisory Special Agent-1 expressed a sense of betrayal that no one had informed him of the intelligence.”
“When the Office cautioned Supervisory Special Agent-1 that we had not verified or corroborated the accuracy of the intelligence and its assertions regarding the Clinton campaign, Supervisory Special Agent-I responded firmly that regardless of whether its contents were true, he should have been informed of it,” Durham added.
During an appearance on MSNBC following the release of the Durham report, Strzok downplayed the report’s significance and claimed that the investigation into the Russian Collusion Hoax never should have happened.
“Look, this is a predictable, sad ending to an investigation that never should have taken place,” Strzok claimed.
“Shortly after [Durham] was announced in 2019, he went on the record as a prosecutor making a rare public statement that he disagreed with IG Horowitz’s conclusion that the investigation was appropriately launched, and then he spent the next three to four years with a cognitive bias trying to build a case that somehow it was. We saw the results today, and the results are clearly that he didn’t come up with anything,” he added.
