The FBI chief agent who criticized Trump is due to congress in the GOP attack: NPR

FBI chief agent Peter Strzok outside his home in Fairfax, Virginia on January 3rd.

Ron Sachs / image-alliance / DPA // AP

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Ron Sachs / image-alliance / DPA // AP

A senior FBI investigator whose personal opposition to Donald Trump has become a huge public embarrassment for the Justice Department is expected Wednesday in Congress.

FBI Deputy Director Peter Strzok is scheduled to meet in camera with the Judiciary Committee of the House. The committee issued a subpoena to compel him to appear even though Strzok had said that he would speak voluntarily.

At least one Democrat, California representative Ted Lieu, said he had asked President Bob Goodlatte, R-Va. to allow the appearance of Strzok to be public. Goodlatte said Wednesday's session would remain closed, said Lieu, but he said the president did not oppose a public hearing later.

Strzok and a former FBI attorney, Lisa Page, have become together a political lightning rod for Republicans on the thousands of messages they have sent on their official government mobile phones.

Their messages are the main source of two law enforcement officials who experienced the 2016 presidential campaign, while, according to the Inspector General of the Justice Ministry, Michael Horowitz, they also led a extramarital affair.

Page and Strzok used their phones at work to hide their relationship from their spouses, said Horowitz. Although FBI officials were allowed to hold and express private political views, their posts were a fair game to be collected by the IG – and made public – because they had been exchanged on their owned devices. to the government.

Page and Strzok shared candid opinions about Hillary Clinton, Bernie Sanders, and then-candidate Trump. The most important thread, for Trump and his allies, is the idea that both could use their official powers to try to prevent Trump from being elected.

"(Trump's) will never become president, is not it?" The page has been asked on August 8, 2016.

Strzok replied, "No, no, we will stop it."

The FBI did not stop Trump from being elected. The IG found that the Justice Department's decision not to prosecute Hillary Clinton was not made as a result of political bias.

This did not put an end to the political problems of the Ministry of Justice, especially since not all text messages were disseminated as quickly as members of Congress asked for them. . Some of them were lost and then recovered and the message "We are going to stop" was not published until this spring.

Key critics, including Jim Jordan, R-Ohio, argue that there was not just a conspiracy inside the DOJ against Trump who tried to hurt him – and who may have helped to frame it in the Russian investigation – but the DOJ itself has covered the conspiracy too.

Asset quoted a Fox News analyst on Twitter who said the issue involved the biggest issues imaginable.

"The most profound question of our time: was there a conspiracy in the Obama Justice Department and the FBI to prevent Donald Trump from becoming president of the United States, and was Strzok at the heart of the conspiracy? Judge Andrew Napolitano, "wrote Trump.

There is no evidence of a wider conspiracy and the Department of Justice has defended its broader investigation to find out if anyone on the Trump campaign has conspired to with the Russian attack on the 2016 elections.

Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein and FBI Director Christopher Wray appear before the House Judiciary Committee on Thursday; We expect that they recognize the problems documented by the IG but defend the overall work of the Ministry of Justice.

Trump and the Republicans spent months flogging the Justice Department and the FBI for allegations of "bias" and "abuse of power", partly based on evidence found by Horowitz and text messages from Strzok.

Horowitz's report acknowledged how the sum of choices and appearances had undermined public confidence in the application of federal law.

Page left the FBI. She told GI investigators in Horowitz's report that she had the impression of being able to separate her political opinions and her official work.

"I guess I did not feel like I was doing anything wrong," Mr. Page told investigators. "I am American, we have the First Amendment, I am entitled to an opinion … I saw it as, I still see it, as if separated from the activity of. investigation … that I did not really think about it, to be honest with you. "

Strzok was escorted out of the building last week but is still included to be used by the office. Strzok's lawyer says that he was unfairly slandered by the political whirlwind that swirled around Clinton's email survey and, later, the Russian investigative department's investigation. Justice now headed by special advocate Robert Mueller.