“Russia has long regarded the United States as its ‘main enemy’, and I spent decades trying to protect our country from its efforts to weaken and weaken us,” Strzok said Tuesday in a statement accompanying the book’s announcement.
“In this book,” he added, “I use that background to explain how the elevation by President Trump and his associates of Trump’s personal interests over the interests of the country enabled Putin to succeed beyond Stalin’s wildest dreams. , and how national security The implications of Putin’s triumph will persist during our next elections and beyond. ”
As a senior counterintelligence agent with more than 20 years in the FBI, Strzok helped lead the investigation into whether Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton mishandled classified information on the private email server she trusted as secretary of state. The FBI finally recommended against criminal charges.
He also played a pivotal role in Russia’s investigation, including interviewing former national security adviser Michael Flynn about his contacts with the Russian ambassador during the presidential transition period.
Strzok briefly served on the team of special counsel Robert Mueller, but was removed from office after the Justice Department inspector general dialed derogatory and pejorative text messages about Trump that Strzok sent and received during the 2016 campaign.
Once the texts were made public, Strzok became a regular target of the Republican President’s attacks on Twitter, and Trump alleged that Strzok and other FBI members had conspired against his campaign and had even committed treason, an accusation that the Strzok’s attorney dismissed it as “more than reckless.” The text messages were exchanged with FBI attorney Lisa Page, and Trump routinely refers to the two together as “lovers.”
In a fiery one-day congressional hearing in July 2018, Strzok insisted that he never allowed personal views to influence his work, although he did acknowledge being shocked by Trump’s behavior during the campaign.
The text messages appeared prominently in the inspector general’s investigations into the Clinton and Russia probes, but the surveillance office said it found no evidence in any case that the actions Strzok and other FBI officials took were motivated by political prejudice.
Strzok was fired from the FBI in August 2018, although he has since sued for the layoff. It remains a frequent target of Trump’s derogatory tweets. In a statement announcing the book, the publishing company said “the Trump administration used its private expression of political opinion to force it out.”
“But by that time,” the statement added, “Strzok had seen more than enough to convince him that the commander-in-chief had fallen under the dominance of the United States’ adversary in the Kremlin.”
Although Mueller did not allege a criminal conspiracy between Moscow and the Trump campaign, the editor said that in the book, Strzok “deals with a question that should concern all American citizens: when a president seems to favor personal and Russian interests over Has our nation become a threat to national security?
Former FBI Director James Comey and former Deputy Director Andrew McCabe have published books that describe aspects of the Trump investigation.
Andrew Weissmann, a former Justice Department prosecutor who served on Mueller’s team, will come out with a book in September.
