‘The FBI and the American people deserve better…’
(Ben Sellers, Liberty Headlines) Freshly fired Peter Strzok, once the FBI’s deputy chief of counterintelligence, took his case to the public sphere Monday in hopes of garnering both moral and financial support.
Echoing the scorched-earth separations of his one-time bosses, James Comey and Andrew McCabe, by taking a defiant tone against the White House, Strzok’s first post on his newly-minted Twitter account was a statement from Washington, D.C. litigation firm Zuckerman Spaeder, blaming “political pressure” for the firing and hinting at a fight to come.
It closed by saying, “The FBI and the American people deserve better.”
Deeply saddened by this decision. It has been an honor to serve my country and work with the fine men and women of the FBI. https://t.co/iET9SbeTrv pic.twitter.com/7VTswzjoxE
— Peter Strzok (@petestrzok) August 13, 2018
Strzok had been reassigned within the agency after his anti-Trump text-messages with mistress Lisa Page became part an investigation by the Justice Department’s Instructor General.
Prior to that, he had lead roles in both the Hillary Clinton email investigation and the Trump Russia investigation.
While testifying before the House Oversight Committee in July, he refused to answer many questions, citing the advice of FBI counsel.
In addition to his Twitter, Strzok established a GoFundMe account “dedicated to covering [his] hefty—and growing—legal costs and his lost income.”
At press time on Tuesday, it had raised nearly $330,000 of its stated goal of $350,000 with roughly 8,500 contributors.
However, a sizable chunk of the money was likely to be returned according to the page itself, which noted that “[d]ue to federal ethics regulations … any donation whose source cannot be determined … may be returned.”
It said additional SEC guidelines regulated any possible conflicts of interest or donations from prohibited sources and that any aggregate donation greater than $390 must be publicly disclosed.
At least 20 of the donations exceeding that amount came from anonymous donors.