8 Quotes by Peter Strzok

By the same token, people today are resistant to the notion that by sharing dubious stories on Facebook, they're furthering the goals of a foreign adversary. Many people, in fact seem to resent the suggestion because of the intimation that they're gullible, easily tricked, or consciously aligned politically with that foreign adversary, even if none of those things are true.

From a counterintelligence perspective, social media also makes it more difficult for people to recognize, let alone believe, that they've been duped. In the context of the analog, pre-internet intelligence world, most people prefer to believe that they're not working with an intelligence officer [of foreign adversary] even if they have suspicions. Most would rather believe, for example, that they have a friendship with a professor at a foreign university.

Why solicit more assaults from critics, many in the highest parts of our government, who have deliberately attempted to distract attention from the real issue of a compromised president’s corrupt complicity in Russian interference? Especially when, aside from required testimony, I have stayed silent for years. First out of duty to the FBI’s rules and then to protect and respect an ongoing investigation. Because the Russians haven’t gone away.

Mueller may have shuttered his office. DOJ may have declined various prosecutions, although, thankfully several investigations continue. Men and women vigilant to national security threats may have been chased out of public service, but the Russians are there, and they’re coming at our 2020 elections with a vengeance.

Our investigations revealed Donald Trump’s willingness to further the malign interests of one of our most formidable adversaries, apparently for his own personal gain. They also showed his willingness to accept political assistance from an opponent like Russia, and it follows, his willingness to subvert everything that America stands for. That’s not patriotic. It’s the opposite.

We could only hope that Trump’s restraint, deliberate or unwitting, would continue, and although he might be tempted to interfere yet again in the investigations into him, our commander in chief would abide by both common sense and the unwritten rules about acceptable presidential behavior that had guided all his predecessors. Yet, deep down, we knew that he probably wouldn’t.

I also cannot conceive of a sadder testament to Trump’s America: fringe elements of a nation, governed by violent invective and vindictive fury. The President’s vitriol posed a physical threat to his targets, which now included me, my children, and my wife.

These were lessons that I would learn again and again in the years to come, but always in distant lands, always in places that lacked the robust democratic institutions of the United States and the legal scaffolding that supports it, the Constitution. I never thought I’d have occasion to revisit these lessons at home in the United States, and I never expected to see the grotesque traits of dictators in Haiti or Iran reflected in my own Commander-in-Chief.