The text messages FBI agent Peter Strzok wrote demonstrate a bias that would keep a person from being on a jury, and the questions he wouldn't answer during his testimony Thursday on Capitol Hill show he should have recused himself from investigating President Donald Trump during his 2016 campaign, Rep. Mark Meadows said Friday.
"It's not about whether he's a patriot or not," the North Carolina Republican and Freedom Caucus chairman told MSNBC's "Morning Joe."
"Obviously, he's served for a long time in the FBI."
People watching the contentious hearing could come away with two conclusions, Meadows continued.
"One, it was not Congress at its finest," said Meadows. "The other part of that is there are certainly with the text message and the bias that it would demonstrate, you wouldn't want him on a jury trying to mete out where justice is in a nonpartisan, unbiased way."
Rep. Raja Krishnamoorthi, D-Ill., who often sparred with his Republican counterparts during the hearing, commented that in some cases, Strzok had been instructed by the FBI's counsel not to answer certain questions.
"In one memorable moment from the very start of the hearing, he basically asked whether he could confer with his FBI's general counsel, and Chairman [Bob] Goodlatte said no," said Krishnamoorthi.
"That made no sense because he's still an FBI employee and he has the right to confer with the FBI's general counsel, especially with regard to questions about classified information and such."
Meadows, though, said Strzok could have answered questions, because they were not about classified information.
"If it had been, we would have gone into a classified setting," said Meadows, saying the FBI counsel's advice was "overly broad."
"He needs to have his counsel," he added, "and I'm not suggesting at any time that you have counsel that you don't have that. But I'm saying that when you look at transparency, if you notice, when you watch the clip, I said we need to be fully transparent when it helps one side or the other. It's critical for the American people to judge for themselves."
Krishnamoorthi, meanwhile, said he thought Strzok came across as "poised and confident," but he agreed that sending the text messages through the use of government-issued phones was "inappropriate" and unprofessional.
"On the other hand, he has been one of the top counterintelligence officials at the FBI for decades, and there was no evidence as concluded by the [Inspector General's] report that any of those views expressed in those text messages translated into biassed actions, and that's always the real question here," Krishnamoorthi commented.
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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