The lawyer for fired FBI agent Peter Strzok is providing more details about his dismissal, saying Monday that Strzok was unfairly targeted.
Aitan Goelman was on MSNBC's "MTP Daily" to talk about Strzok's firing, which he said occurred Friday by way of a 25-page letter that included a "last-chance agreement" Strzok signed in July.
"And then there was a one and a half page letter from Deputy Director [David] Bowditch overruling the decision and saying Pete's texts were responsible for bringing the FBI into disrepute, and that is wildly inconsistent with past precedent," Goelman said.
Strzok has been at the center of the Department of Justice's Russia investigation ever since he launched the FBI's official probe in 2016 into whether the Trump campaign had improper ties to Russia. In 2017, it became public that Strzok had exchanged anti-Trump text messages with FBI lawyer Lisa Page, with whom he was having an affair.
As more and more of the messages were made public, it became clear that the pair did not want Donald Trump to win the 2016 presidential election. Both worked on the FBI's Russia and Hillary Clinton email investigations.
Conservatives have hypothesized that Strzok's opinions showed bias and, more seriously, could be proof of an FBI conspiracy to bring down Trump.
"I don't think that there's any question that he showed poor judgment in sending these [texts]," Goelman said. "But Pete signed a last-chance agreement and was willing to take a punishment that the Office of Professional Responsibility" handed down, which did not include being fired.
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