Peter Paul Strzok II (, like struck; born March 7, 1970) is an adjunct professor at Georgetown University and former United States Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) agent. During his FBI career, he was the Deputy Assistant Director of the Counterintelligence Division and led the investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 United States elections. He had previously been the chief of the division's Counterespionage Section and led the investigation into Hillary Clinton's use of a personal email server.
In June and July 2017, Strzok worked on Robert Mueller's Special Counsel investigation into any links or coordination between Donald Trump's presidential campaign and the Russian government. In July 2017, Mueller removed Strzok from the Russia investigation after partisan text message exchanges between Strzok and FBI lawyer Lisa Page were revealed, including a message in which Strzok said "we'll stop" Trump from becoming president. News of the text messages led Trump, Republican congressmen and right-wing media to speculate that Strzok participated in a conspiracy to undermine the Trump presidency.
On August 10, 2018, FBI deputy director David Bowdich fired Strzok for the text messages after the FBI's employee disciplinary office had recommended that Strzok only be suspended for 60 days and demoted. On August 6, 2019, Strzok filed a wrongful termination suit against the FBI and the U.S. Department of Justice, asking to be reinstated and awarded back pay. He asserted in the suit that his text messages were "protected political speech", and that the termination violated his First Amendment rights. In May 2024, the Justice Department agreed to settle Strzok's wrongful termination suit for $1.2 million. Strzok's 2020 book, Compromised: Counterintelligence and the Threat of Donald J. Trump, became a New York Times and Washington Post bestseller.
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Early life
Peter Paul Strzok II was born near Sault Ste. Marie, Michigan, to Peter Paul Strzok and Virginia Sue Harris. His father is a retired US Army Lieutenant Colonel who served in the Corps of Engineers. During a 21-year military career, his father did two tours in Vietnam, two in Saudi Arabia, and three in Iran, where Strzok attended elementary school at the American School in Tehran prior to the Iranian Revolution. The family later moved to Upper Volta, where the elder Strzok took an assignment with Catholic Relief Services after retiring from military service. One of Strzok's uncles is Father James Strzok, SJ, a Jesuit priest doing missionary work in east Africa. The Strzok family is of Polish descent.
For high school, Strzok attended St. John's Preparatory School in Minnesota, graduating in 1987. He earned a bachelor's degree from Georgetown University in 1991 as well as a master's degree in 2013. After Georgetown, Strzok served as an officer in the United States Army before leaving to join the FBI in 1996 as an intelligence research specialist. Strzok is married to Melissa Hodgman, an associate director at the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission.
FBI
A career employee with the FBI for 22 years before his firing in August 2018, Strzok had been a lead agent in the FBI's "Operation Ghost Stories" against Andrey Bezrukov and Yelena Vavilova, a Russian spy couple who were part of the Illegals Program, a network of Russian sleeper agents who were arrested in 2010. By July 2015, he was serving as the section chief of the Counterespionage Section, a subordinate section of the FBI's Counterintelligence Division.
Strzok led a team of a dozen investigators during the FBI's investigation into Hillary Clinton's use of a personal email server and assisted in the drafting of public statements for then-FBI Director James Comey. He changed the description of Clinton's actions from "grossly negligent", which could be a criminal offense, to "extremely careless". The draft was reviewed and corrected by several people and its creation was a team process. In his statement to Congress, Comey said that "no reasonable prosecutor" would bring charges based on available evidence. Later, when additional emails were discovered a few days before the election, Strzok reportedly supported reopening the Clinton investigation. He then co-wrote the letter which Comey used to inform Congress, which "reignited the email controversy in the final days" and "played a key role in a controversial FBI decision that upended Hillary Clinton's campaign."
Strzok rose to the rank of Deputy Assistant Director in the Counterintelligence Division and was the number two official within that division for investigations involving Russia. In that capacity, he led the FBI's investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 United States elections, and examined both the Steele dossier and the Russian role in the 2016 Democratic National Committee email leak. He oversaw the bureau's interviews with then-National Security Advisor Michael Flynn; Flynn later pled guilty to lying during those interviews.
In July 2017, Strzok became the most senior FBI agent working for Robert Mueller's 2017 Special Counsel investigation looking into any links or coordination between Trump's presidential campaign and the Russian government. He served in that position until August 2017, at which time he was moved to the Human Resources Branch. According to The New York Times, Strzok was "considered one of the most experienced and trusted FBI counterintelligence investigators," as well as "one of the Bureau's top experts on Russia" according to CNN.
Text messages
The IG's investigation examined thousands of text messages exchanged using FBI-issued cell phones between Strzok and Lisa Page, with whom he was having an extramarital affair. She was also a trial attorney on Mueller's team. The texts were sent between August 15, 2015, and December 1, 2016. At the request of the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence, the DOJ turned over 375 of these text messages to the House Judiciary Committee. Some of the texts disparaged then-presidential candidate Donald Trump, Chelsea Clinton, Attorney General in the Obama administration Eric Holder, former Democratic Governor Martin O'Malley, and candidate for the Democratic presidential nomination Bernie Sanders. Strzok called Trump an "idiot" in August 2015 and texted "God Hillary should win 100,000,000 - 0" after a Republican debate in March 2016.
In their messages, Strzok and Page also advocated creating a Special Counsel to investigate the Hillary Clinton email controversy, and discussed suggesting former U.S. Attorney Patrick Fitzgerald be considered for such a probe. Devlin Barrett from The Washington Post alleged Strzok and Page had been using the backdrop of discussing the Clinton investigation as a cover for their personal communications during an affair. Upon learning of the text messages, Mueller removed Strzok from the investigation. Messages released in January 2018 showed that Strzok was hesitant to join the Mueller investigation, with Page encouraging him not to do so.
Strzok's colleagues and a former Trump administration official said that Strzok had never shown any political bias. An associate of his says the political parts of the text messages were especially related to Trump's criticism of the FBI's investigation of the Clinton emails. According to FBI guidelines, agents are allowed to have and express political opinions as individuals. Former FBI and DOJ officials told The Hill that it was not uncommon for agents like Strzok to hold political opinions and still conduct an impartial investigation. Several agents asserted that Mueller had removed Strzok to protect the integrity of the special counsel's Russia investigation. Strzok was not punished following his reassignment. Defenders of Strzok and Page in the FBI said no professional misconduct between them occurred.
The decision by the DOJ to publicize the private messages in December 2017 was controversial. Statements by DOJ spokeswomen revealed that some reporters had copies of the texts even before the DOJ invited the press to review them, but the DOJ did not authorize the pre-release. Democrats on the House Judiciary Committee have asked for a review of the circumstances under which the texts were leaked to select press outlets.
Post-FBI
Lawsuit
Strzok filed a wrongful termination lawsuit against the DOJ and the FBI in federal court on August 6, 2019, asking to be reinstated and awarded back pay. He argued that the Justice Department had terminated him because of "unrelenting pressure" from Trump over his comments in private text messages. Strzok asserted in the suit that his sentiments were "protected political speech," that the DOJ had violated his privacy by releasing his texts to the media, and that his termination violated the First Amendment. He alleged that the Trump administration had "consistently tolerated and even encouraged partisan political speech by federal employees", but only if that speech lauded the president and denounced his opponents. He said his removal was "part of a broader campaign against the very principle of free speech ... initiated and led by" Trump. The Justice Department and FBI spokeswomen declined to comment. In February 2023, federal judge Amy Berman Jackson ruled that Trump and FBI director Christopher Wray could be questioned under oath regarding the suit.
His lawsuit was consolidated with that of Lisa Page, who in December 2019 sued the FBI and Justice Department, accusing them of violating the Privacy Act. In May 2024, Strzok and Page reached a tentative settlement with the Justice Department. On July 26, it was revealed that Strzok will receive $1.2 million and Lisa Page will receive $800,000.
Book
In September 2020, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt published Strzok's book, Compromised: Counterintelligence and the Threat of Donald J. Trump, which became a New York Times and Washington Post bestseller. During an NBC News interview upon release of the book, Strzok confirmed a recent report in The New York Times that the FBI had opened a broad counterintelligence investigation into Trump after the president fired FBI director James Comey in May 2017, based on concerns over Trump's "financial entanglements" with Russia. That investigation was curtailed days later by Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein, giving the FBI the impression that the incipient Mueller investigation would pursue it, though Rosenstein instructed Mueller not to, effectively ending the investigation.
Academics
Since October 2020, Strzok has been an adjunct professor at Georgetown University’s School of Foreign Service.
Podcast
On February 6, 2023, the Cleanup On Aisle 45 podcast, hosted by Allison Gill, announced that Peter Strzok would be the new co-host starting on February 22, 2023. On the November 27, 2024, episode of ‘’Cleanup on Aisle 45’’ Allison Gill announced that Peter Strzok was no longer going to be the co-host for an undisclosed reason after that episode.