by Misty Severi
A federal judge on Tuesday dismissed disgraced former FBI agent Peter Strzok’s long-running lawsuit in which he claimed he was illegally fired and that the Justice Department and FBI violated his free speech and privacy rights.
The FBI terminated Strzok’s employment in 2018 after a review of thousands of his texts with bureau lawyer Lisa Page, with whom he was having an affair, showed a bias against then-GOP presidential nominee Donald Trump.
U.S. District Judge Amy Berman Jackson ruled that Strzok and his team failed to prove how his rights were violated in his dismissal, but emphasized that she was not ruling on whether the firing was the right course of action.
“The sole question to be determined here, then, is whether the FBI’s imposition of the sanction of termination comported with the Constitution,” Jackson, an Obama appointee, wrote in her ruling. “After a thorough review of the pleadings and the materials submitted in support of the cross-motions, the Court finds that there is no genuine dispute of material fact that would preclude the entry of summary judgment in the defendants’ favor and that plaintiff’s motion for summary judgment should be denied.”
Jackson said she will keep her full opinion under seal until Sept. 30, 2025, because some of the material and depositions were filed under seal. But she said she does not believe it needs to remain sealed and will lift the seal unless the teams object.
Strzok has not yet publicly commented on the ruling, and can appeal the ruling to the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals.
The former FBI agent, who worked in the bureau for 22 years before he was fired, has denied that his personal views of Trump influenced his ability to perform the job, per Politico, and an inspector general report found no evidence that Strzok’s Russia probe was affected by an alleged bias.
Strzok was involved in the start of Crossfire Hurricane, the investigation into the Trump-Russia collusion hoax. At one point, less than three months before the 2016 presidential election, he texted Page that “that there’s no way [Trump] gets elected,” adding, however, that they “can’t take that risk.”
“It’s like an insurance policy in the unlikely event you die before you’re 40,” Strzok continued.
After Trump’s election in 2016, Justice Department official Bruce Ohr served as a go-between for the FBI and dossier author Christopher Steele, meeting at least 12 times with FBI officials, including Strzok and Page, according to Senate Homeland Security Committee documents. Strzok confirmed during congressional testimony that Ohr provided the FBI with dossier material.
The FBI received the now-debunked dossier through multiple channels: Senator John McCain obtained it via McCain Institute associate David Kramer and gave it to FBI Director James Comey on December 9. The 35-page document, compiled by former British spy Christopher Steele and funded by the DNC and Clinton campaign through Fusion GPS, contained unverified allegations about Trump’s Russia connections in addition to several salacious personal allegations about the president-elect’s behavior.
The dossier subsequently became part of government intelligence assessments on Russian interference, leading to news coverage of its contents and the FBI’s use of it in surveillance applications.
After The Washington Post published a story titled: “FBI in agreement with CIA that Russia aimed to help Trump win White House.” and reacting to Trump’s then-upcoming presidency, Strzok texted Page, “I hope this upcoming presidency doesn’t fill my years with regret, wonderwishing [sic] what we might have done differently,” SHSC documents noted.
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Misty Severi is a reporter for Just the News. Zachery Schmidt is the digital editor of The Star News Network and contributed to this story.
