En av spesialetterforsker Bob Muellers mest erfarne FBI-agenter og en leder innen kontraetterretning, Peter Strzok, ble i august overraskende fjernet fra sin post. Først nå har vi fått vite hvorfor. Han hadde uttrykt sterke antipatier mot Trump i meldinger til en kollega, advokat i FBI, Liza Page, som han på toppen av det hele hadde et utenomekteskapelig forhold til.
Men offentligheten fikk først høre bakgrunnen for degraderingen lørdag. Det vil være særdeles uheldig for Mueller om det blir kjent at en av FBIs mest sentrale etterforskere har et så negativt syn på kandidat Trump. Flere krever allerede offentliggjøring. Hvis det hadde vært noe som talte mot Trump ville det skjedd for lenge siden.
One of the FBI’s top investigators, who was chosen by special counsel Robert Mueller just weeks ago to help supervise the investigation into alleged collusion between Russia and the Trump campaign, has exited the team, according to ABC News.
There has been no public explanation as to why Peter Strzok, one of the former chiefs of the counterespionage section of the FBI, left the job; he was working with roughly two dozen other members of Mueller’s team to handle the investigation. Strzok is now working in the FBI’s human resources division.
Dette var meldingen i august. Nå heter det:
The allegations came to light after the Justice Department’s inspector general started examining Strzok’s messages.
“Immediately upon learning of the allegations, the Special Counsel’s Office removed Peter Strzok from the investigation,” Peter Carr, a spokesman for Mueller, confirmed to Fox News.
He was the FBI’s lead investigator on the Clinton email investigation, so much so that he interviewed the former secretary of state on July 2, 2016.
Days later, then-FBI Director James Comey announced that he would not be recommending charges against Clinton for mishandling classified information on her private email server.
During this investigation, Strzok was allegedly involved in an extra-marital affair with FBI lawyer Lisa Page, according to The Washington Post.
As deputy FBI director for counterintelligence, Strzok also enjoyed liaison with various agencies in the intelligence community, including the CIA, then led by Director John Brennan.
House investigators told Fox News they have long regarded Strzok as a key figure in the chain of events when the bureau, in 2016, received the infamous anti-Trump «dossier» and launched a counterintelligence investigation into Russian meddling in the election that ultimately came to encompass FISA surveillance of a Trump campaign associate.
The «dossier» was a compendium of salacious and largely unverified allegations about then-candidate Trump and others around him that was compiled by the opposition research firm Fusion GPS. The firm’s bank records, obtained by House investigators, revealed that the project was funded by the Clinton campaign and the Democratic National Committee.
Strzok himself briefed the committee on Dec. 5, 2016, the sources said, but within months of that session House Intelligence Committee investigators were contacted by an informant suggesting that there was “documentary evidence” that Strzok was purportedly obstructing the House probe into the dossier.
Those witnesses are FBI Deputy Director Andrew McCabe and the FBI officer said to have handled Christopher Steele, the British spy who used Russian sources to compile the dossier for Fusion GPS. The official said to be Steele’s FBI handler has also appeared already before the Senate panel.
In October, however, the speaker took the unusual step of saying publicly that the two agencies were «stonewalling» Congress.
Et annet triks i boken er å påberope seg hemmelighold så stort at de folkevalgte ikke kan få se dem.
Federal officials told Fox News the requested records include “highly sensitive raw intelligence,” so sensitive that officials from foreign governments have emphasized to the U.S. the “potential danger and chilling effect” it could place on foreign intelligence sources.
