Rep. Darrell Issa, after having FBI agent Peter Strzok read his own texts out loud during Thursday's contentious hearing on Capitol Hill, defended the move as a way to show Strzok's biases.
"We know Peter Strzok is a bad guy," the California Republican told Fox News' "Fox & Friends" about the agent who at one time had been in charge of the investigations into Hillary Clinton's email server and that of now-President Donald Trump and Russia.
"These were his words, [when] he sat in front of us for eight hours, nine hours and denied there was any bias."
In addition, said Issa, Strzok was "dismissed for cause" from the investigations, but the FBI agent denied that had happened, saying he was dismissed over the "perception" from the text messages he exchanged with FBI attorney Lisa Page, with whom he was having an affair.
"The reality is if that was a widespread attitude at the FBI, we would be abolishing the FBI," said Issa. "I certainly hope there aren't too many Peter Strzoks there because somebody who can tell us under oath that this doesn't indicate at least some bias."
He warned, though, that even though Strzok will no longer be at the center of investigations to "clear Hillary Clinton and try to indict President Trump again, "there are other people embedded there there [with] this attitude,"
Further, Strzok admitted on Thursday there are further texts on his personal phone that have never been made available, said Issa.
"The only reason we know about it is that these kinds of things were going on on official phones that were discoverable," the congressman added.
Sandy Fitzgerald ✉
Sandy Fitzgerald has more than three decades in journalism and serves as a general assignment writer for Newsmax covering news, media, and politics.
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