Peter Strzok’s appearance before the House Oversight Committee was always guaranteed to be more spectacle than substance: a proxy for the broader fight between Republicans who view the Mueller probe as a deep-state plot to oust Donald Trump and the Democrats determined to do something—force the G.O.P. to renounce Trump? Drop the big “i”-word? —in response. But even for a House committee that wasted years scrutinizing Hillary Clinton over Benghazi, Thursday’s public hearing into whether Strzok’s anti-Trump animus jeopardized Mueller’s investigation was a circus, devolving within minutes into a WWE-like SummerSlam, with staged story lines and scurrilous ad hominem attacks. In fact, if there was any difference between the Strzok hearing and a wrestling match, it was that the Republicans and Democrats on the committee were actually out for blood, and the production values were lower.

At stake was the reputation of the F.B.I., with Strzok, a former special agent on the team investigating possible collusion between Trump and Russia in 2016, at the center. Last year, Strzok and his co-worker Lisa Page were booted from Robert Mueller’s investigation after it was discovered that the two paramours had exchanged texts disparaging Trump as an “idiot” and his voters as “hillbillies,” among other mundane observations. This, Republicans have since claimed, was enough to prove that the Mueller probe was politically motivated from the outset, and thus illegitimate. (Page declined to appear in a public hearing, setting off an entirely different right-wing brouhaha.) Strzok had already been grilled about this alleged bias two weeks ago, in private testimony before the House Judiciary Committee, but was eager to set the record straight before the American people. Perhaps that should have been a warning to House Oversight chairman Trey Gowdy of the fireworks to come.

As a smirking Strzok took his seat at the witness table, several Democrat staffers filed in behind the representatives holding signs that named those who’ve pled guilty in the Mueller investigation so far: Michael Flynn, George Papadopoulos, and several others. That was enough to preview the daylong bedlam that unfolded: a scene that a former Rubio staffer described as “scary, sad, and hilarious all at the same time.”

Strzok Goes Full Frank Capra for the Cameras

Early on, Strzok declared the entire exercise of the hearing to be a farce, saying that a text message he’d sent to Page regarding Trump—“we’ll stop him”—referred to the American people, and not to the F.B.I. “At no time in any of these texts did those personal beliefs ever enter into the realm of any action I took,” he said, before accusing the Republicans of permanently damaging the reputation of the F.B.I.

No, You’re a Liar

Strzok’s prepared testimony was soon followed by Republican lawmakers demanding that he be held in contempt for not answering questions related to the ongoing F.B.I. investigation:

Strzok Goes Full Frank Capra for the Cameras, Part II