House panel subpoenas FBI agent who wrote anti-Trump texts, unclear if he will testify

WASHINGTON — The House Judiciary Committee on Tuesday subpoenaed FBI agent Peter Strzok to testify publicly next week about anti-Trump text messages he wrote to his girlfriend while they were both working at the bureau.

It was not clear, however, whether Strzok, who helped lead the inquiries into Hillary Clinton's use of a private email server and Russia's interference in the 2016 presidential election, will appear at a July 10 joint hearing of the Judiciary and the House Oversight and Government Reform committees.

Strzok already answered 11 hours of questions from committee members during a closed hearing last week, and he was angered by selective leaks of his testimony by lawmakers.

"If the committees were actually interested in making sure the American people knew the truth, they would release the transcript of Pete’s previous testimony," attorney Aitan Goelman of Zuckerman Spaeder, which represents Strzok, said in a statement. "Their real intentions are made clear by the fact that they took his testimony in secret, selectively leaked parts of it and are now withholding the transcript from the public."

Strzok had requested that his initial hearing last week be public and "one way or another, he will testify publicly soon," Goelman said.

"Pete wants the American people to hear his testimony for themselves, instead of having his words leaked, twisted and mischaracterized by members of Congress," Goelman said. "The only question is when and before what committee, and those details are not yet settled."

GOP members are alleging bias by Justice and FBI officials against Trump and in favor of Clinton — and they are using Strzok's text messages to try to bolster their charges.

Democrats say that Republicans are focusing on Strzok in an effort to undermine special counsel Robert Mueller's investigation of Russian interference in the 2016 election and possible collusion between the Trump campaign and the Kremlin. Strzok served as a lead investigator in both the Russia investigation and the investigation into Clinton's use of a private email server while she was secretary of state.

Mueller immediately removed Strzok from his team last summer after DOJ Inspector General Michael Horowitz discovered anti-Trump emails that Strzok exchanged with FBI attorney Lisa Page in 2016. Strzok and Page, who has since left the FBI, were involved in an extramarital affair at the time.

In a report to Congress released last month, Horowitz said that Page wrote to Strzok in a text message: "(Trump's) not ever going to become president, right?" In response, Strzok wrote: "No. No he's not. We'll stop it."

However, Horowitz's report found no evidence that the FBI or DOJ were motivated by political bias in deciding not to prosecute Clinton for using a private email server to send and receive sensitive information.

The report characterized the politically charged text messages between Strzok and Page as "antithetical to the core values of the FBI." Still, investigators "did not find documentary or testimonial evidence that improper considerations, including political bias, directly affected the specific investigative actions we reviewed."

The report also said that Strzok repeatedly pushed for more aggressive action in the Clinton probe.

"The conduct by these employees cast a cloud over the entire FBI investigation and sowed doubt about the FBI’s work," the report concluded. "The damage caused by these employees’ actions extends far beyond the scope of the (Clinton) investigation and goes to the heart of the FBI’s reputation for neutral fact finding and political independence."

Goelman, in an op-ed in USA TODAY last month, said Strzok has become the victim of "political gamesmanship" by Congress and President Trump, who has repeatedly tweeted about Strzok as evidence of bias by the FBI and Justice Department.

"They have spent months cynically taking these texts out of context and saying that one- or two-word snippets somehow prove that the FBI investigations of former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, and the Russia probe itself, were biased," Goelman wrote.

"Despite the obvious partisan gamesmanship going on, the reality is that Pete did nothing more than express his personal opinions in private conversations with a friend and colleague," the attorney said. "And what his attackers fail to ever mention is that, among the many other texts, Pete criticizes a range of both Democratic and Republican figures, including Hillary Clinton, Bernie Sanders and (former Attorney General) Loretta Lynch."