3 Key Takeaways From The Disastrous Strzok Hearing

Last Thursday, embattled FBI agent Peter Strzok testified and was questioned by members of the House during a publicly broadcast hearing that spanned for more than ten hours.

Largely, the hearing was partisan posturing from both sides – with the Republicans grilling Strzok over his text messages to and from FBI mistress Lisa Page and the Democrats widely supporting and applauding Strzok’s fiery defiance.

Democratic Rep. Steve Cohen (D-TN) even went so far as to suggest Strzok deserved a purple heart for enduring the GOP’s treatment of him at the hearing. 

Despite the limitless posturing – a few key questions were answered in the lengthy ten hours…

How Clinton’s charge of using a private home e-mail server went from “grossly negligent” to “extremely careless”?

Republican Rep. James Sensenbrenner (R-WI) inquired how the wording of a statement condemning Hillary Clinton’s use of a private e-mail server was changed before it was even issued.

Strzok, who led the FBI’s investigation into Hillary Clinton’s use of her personal e-mail server, rephrased the charge of Clinton’s actions from “grossly negligent” to “extremely careless” in a draft of the FBI’s statement that was publicly issued by then-FBI Director, James Comey.

However, Strzok argued that the revision was introduced by the FBI’s legal counsel, who noted that “gross negligence” carried a specific legal meaning with specific legal implications.

When Sensenbrenner asked why the change had been made, Strzok explained:

With regard to that decision, there was concern within the perspective of a legal definition of that term that people would draw an inference based on that use that it was necessarily talking a specific subset of a statute…

Sensenbrenner’s reply? “That rates four Pinocchios”.  

Were Clinton’s e-mails sent to a “foreign entity”?

Rep. Louie Gohmert (R-TX) revealed that virtually all of Hillary Clinton’s e-mails were sent to a foreign entity and the FBI didn’t bother to follow-up on the finding.

Gohmert detailed:

The Intelligence Community Inspector General (ICIG) Chuck McCullough sent his investigator Frank Rucker… to brief you [Strzok]… about an anomaly they had found with Hillary Clinton’s e-mails… When they had done the forensic analysis, they found that her emails – every single one except four – over 30,000, were going to an address that was not on the distribution list… To an unauthorized source that was a foreign entity unrelated to Russia…

Strzok claimed he remembered meeting the ICIG’s investigator Rucker but could “not recall the specific content or discussions” of their meeting.

In 2017, McCullough, the Inspector General of the Intelligence Community, came forward with concerns about Clinton’s e-mail server and was met with pushback from Director of National Intelligence, James Clapper.

McCullough said he “expected to be embraced and protected” for questioning the server but was faced with a very different reality after seven senators wrote a letter accusing him of politicizing the matter.

How the infamous Steele dossier landed in the hands of the FBI?

After claiming he had no form of communication with Fusion GPS, Strzok flipped on his story by saying he had spoken with Bruce Ohr – former Obama-era associate deputy attorney general – several times in late 2016 and early 2017. The only problem? Bruce’s wife, Nellie Ohr, worked for Fusion GPS in 2016.

Rep. Ron DeSantis (R-FL) exposed the conflict of interest and incestuous political relationships plainly:

[Strzok] confirmed for the first time… that the Steele dossier made its way into the FBI through Bruce Ohr at the Justice Department… You had Hillary Clinton and the Democrats funneling money to the Perkins Coie law firm who then paid Fusion GPS… with… Glenn Simpson contracting out with Chris Steele, and… Steele paying whoever… he needed to pay to try to get some of the garbage that he got… and Nellie Ohr, from Fusion GPS… giving that to her husband, Bruce Ohr, and… Bruce is giving it to people like Strzok in the FBI.

To note, the Steele dossier – which was funneled to the FBI via political biases – was used as a justification for the warrantless FISA surveillance against the Trump administration.

Three answers to long-standing questions were given closure in Strzok’s ten-hour testimony – but if you weren’t paying attention, they passed by without any significance or candor. Add it to the list, just more scandals to throw onto the burning pile that has become the FBI and America’s “impartial” intelligence community.