If one wished to write a Hollywood screenplay for a political thriller about an effort to blow up a hugely corrupt and powerful leftist bureaucratic political establishment (which we fondly call the Deep State), a plot device might include inserting a Trojan Horse character into that establishment who could subvert it from within. That character might take the form of Peter Strzok.
Strzok was the FBI’s former Deputy Assistant Director of the Counterespionage Section, before being transferred to the human resources department preparatory to his termination. He is in the eyes of most conservatives a loathsome, corrupt, Swamp Creature ninja warrior who did the bidding of the Deep State in shielding Hillary Clinton from prison and in trying to take out Donald Trump as a presidential candidate (and president). But the damage that Strzok ultimately did to that very Deep State has them reeling to this day.
Strzok was the principal FBI investigator leading Mid Year Exam, the FBI “investigation” into Hillary Clinton’s egregious violations of laws and regulations governing the handling of classified information, which eventually led to no charges being filed against Hillary. And he was also the lead investigator in a fraudulently predicated counterintelligence investigation against Donald Trump’s campaign – quite literally authoring the “electronic communication” which launched that operation, called Crossfire Hurricane, “approving” that initiating document, which he authored, and then sending it to himself. That document is described by former FBI Assistant Director for Intelligence Kevin Brock as a “train wreck” for launching an FBI investigation and, he says, should be “Exhibit A” in prosecuting Strzok.
It occurred to me as I looked at the chicken-scratching notes released this week that Strzok purportedly took of a January 5, 2017 White House meeting that this guy Strzok couldn’t have done more damage to the anti-Trump coup-plotters in the Obama administration if he had tried.
Exactly how Strzok came to learn the contents of this meeting is a matter of some conjecture, and curiosity, as it appears that he either attended the meeting, listened in on it, or heard a recording of it. It’s been said that then-FBI Director James Comey relayed the contents of the meeting to Strzok, but given the disjointedness of the scrawled notes, it seems odd that they were not organized in a more legible and coherent manner if Comey really told Strzok about it later.
In any event, through these notes, Peter Strzok provided the most damning documentary evidence released to date that Barack Obama, Joe Biden, Sally Yates, Susan Rice and James Comey directly participated in possibly the most outrageous known act of sedition in American history, putting in motion the investigative targeting for ostensible “Russian collusion” of Donald Trump’s National Security Advisor-designate Michael Flynn using, in Obama’s words, “the right people.” And we haven’t even seen the redacted portions of that document. One can only imagine what sins lurk among the blacked-out portions of the notes.
What strikes me as most interesting is what Strzok recorded Vice President Biden as saying: “Logan Act.” In other words, Joe Biden was the plotter who put forth the idea of using the obscure, never successfully prosecuted, 18th century law prohibiting private American citizens from conducting foreign policy with foreign officials as the basis to investigate Gen. Flynn. This ridiculous pretext was then actually used as the predicate upon which Flynn was investigated, despite Flynn being perfectly within his rights as the National Security Advisor-designate to have such conversations with foreign officials and Comey even noting that Flynn’s (recorded) conversation with Amb. Kilsyak was “legit.”
But here’s the thing: Strzok put “Logan Act” inside of quotation marks following Biden’s name. In other words, he wanted it expressly known that those words came out of Joe Biden’s mouth. There was to be no ambiguity. Why would he do that, when comments of other officials cited are not contained within quotation marks? Is it possible that Peter Strzok was deliberately creating a documentary time bomb intended for later discovery that would reveal Joe Biden’s undisputed complicity in the seditious plot? And to sink his future presidential aspirations?
Now you’re thinking: “Marshall, you’ve been working in the DC wilderness of mirrors too long. You’ve done your duty. It’s time to come in from the cold, son.”
No, I’m not really suggesting Strzok had some cunning motive to undermine Biden and his fellow coup-plotters. Frankly, Strzok wasn’t that smart, nor that patriotic. But it would make for a neat twist in our hypothetical Hollywood political thriller.
Adding to the damage Strzok did to his Deep State masters were the voluminous – and I mean voluminous – text messages and email exchanges between Strzok and his FBI colleague/lover, Lisa Page. Their trail of documented chatter back and forth was a virtual Rosetta Stone for investigators and the American public in exposing the whole breathtakingly deep and wide anti-Trump/pro-Hillary corruption among virtually the entire upper echelon of the FBI. Especially revealing was Strzok reminding Page of the “insurance policy” she proposed in the slim chance that Donald Trump were elected president, which would be an investigation of Trump after his election leading to his impeachment and removal.
I think Peter Strzok was pegged early on as a rabidly political Democrat Party loyalist within the Bureau. When it became clear that the FBI had to investigate Hillary’s illegal email server set-up, a highly corrupt, pro-Hillary FBI hierarchy needed someone to take point in tanking the investigation. So one day - let’s say April 17, 2015 at 10:30 in the morning, just to pick a random point on the calendar - Strzok got called into a meeting and was given marching orders by the FBI suits. The rest is history.
A movie premised on the idea that our corrupt powerful leftist permanent bureaucracy was infiltrated by a brilliant, breadcrumb-laying Deep State saboteur would make for a heart-warming, feel-good patriotic film for us to watch this July 4 weekend. Sadly, though, Peter Strzok was just a loathsome, corrupt, Swamp Creature ninja warrior doing the bidding of the Deep State. And he was a bumbler, who ended up exposing their whole, sordid decrepit existence. Sometimes life isn’t stranger than fiction.
William F. Marshall has been an intelligence analyst and investigator in the government, private, and non-profit sectors for more than 30 years. He is a senior investigator for Judicial Watch, Inc., and a contributor to Townhall, American Thinker, and The Federalist. Follow him on Parler and Twitter at @BillMarshallDC1. (The views expressed are the author’s alone, and not necessarily those of Judicial Watch.)