美国国家公共电台 NPR Embattled FBI Agent Peter Strzok Clashes With GOP In Raucous Hearing

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MARY LOUISE KELLY, HOST:

Conservatives who accuse the FBI of bias¹ have pointed² fingers at one special agent in particular - Peter Strzok. Well, today Strzok defended himself before Congress. He admitted that he did send highly political text messages while working on two big cases in 2016. But he said he always heeded⁴ his obligation to act impartially⁵.

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PETER STRZOK: Let me be clear unequivocally and under oath not once in my 26 years of defending our nation did my personal opinions impact any official action I took. This is true for the Clinton email investigation⁶, for the investigation into Russian interference and for every other investigation I've worked on. It is not who I am, and it is not something I would ever do, period.

KELLY: OK. Well, our own Tim Mak was covering this hearing before the House judiciary and oversight⁷ committees, and he's with me now. Hey, Tim.

TIM MAK, BYLINE⁸: Hey there.

KELLY: So why were lawmakers wanting to hear from Strzok today?

MAK: So he was there because the Justice Department's internal watchdog discovered a number of texts that he sent to another important FBI official, a lawyer named Lisa Page. And this was back in 2016. They talked about all sorts of things like Hillary Clinton, Bernie Sanders, the former attorney general Eric Holder⁹ and, most famously, Donald Trump¹⁰. And they weren't fans of Trump.

And so Strzok was taken off the Russia case when these texts were discovered. Republicans say that Strzok was biased¹¹ against Trump from the very beginning and was biased in favor of Clinton. So he was trying to hurt Trump and help Clinton. He said essentially¹² no. He said he's got political opinions like everyone else, but essentially, he kept them to himself. He didn't bring them into his work.

KELLY: Were you able to get a read on whether lawmakers bought this?

MAK: Well, it depends which lawmaker we're talking about. Republicans definitely did not buy it. Congressman¹³ Ted³ Poe said, I don't believe you. Other folks were basically saying that Strzok clearly couldn't be honest about these cases based on his personal bias. And Congressman Trey Gowdy, another Republican, he said it was just too dangerous for law enforcement officials to prejudge the people they were investigating before those investigations¹⁴ had even gotten started. So you've got a lot of skepticism on the Republican side.

KELLY: And what about the Democrats¹⁶? Did it sound as though they believed him?

MAK: Well, they tried to draw attention to what they thought should be the real focus, which is Russia's attack on the election. They said we should be having hearings about all sorts of things unrelated to this personal and specific case. They also said, hey, why aren't we having hearings and investigations into the separation of families at the border? And Congressman Hakeem Jeffries of New York, he's also a Democrat¹⁵. He said, look; if Strzok was really trying to hurt Trump's campaign, he would have done something to hurt Trump's campaign, which was - one possibility could have been to reveal that there was an FBI investigation while the campaign was still underway. And that never happened.

KELLY: Now, it sounds like there are still a lot of unanswered questions. Did lawmakers give any indication today of where they want to take this next?

MAK: Well, look; I mean, the story just isn't going to go away. Republicans have been looking for some reasons to say, hey, there's a bias at the heart of this investigation into possible Trump-Russia ties. They have been in public attacking the Justice Department and the FBI for months, saying that there is political bias in the agency and in the bureau. And Republicans have kind of made an effort to raise doubts about the special counsel investigation writ¹⁷ large.

KELLY: All right, NPR's Tim Mak, thanks very much for tracking the story.

MAK: Thanks a lot.