{"id":30151,"date":"2024-07-27T03:08:00","date_gmt":"2024-07-27T08:08:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/ustower.net\/?p=30151"},"modified":"2024-07-27T04:11:53","modified_gmt":"2024-07-27T09:11:53","slug":"former-fbi-agent-peter-strzok-reaches-1-2-million-settlement-with-doj-lawyers","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/ustower.net\/?p=30151","title":{"rendered":"Former FBI agent Peter Strzok reaches $1.2 million settlement with DOJ: Lawyers"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p class=\"has-medium-font-size wp-block-paragraph\">Former FBI agent Pete Strzok, who was&nbsp;<a href=\"https:\/\/abcnews.go.com\/Politics\/fbi-agent-anti-trump-texts-fired\/story?id=57151083\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">fired from the bureau<\/a>&nbsp;in 2018 after his disparaging text messages about Donald Trump were made public, has reached a settlement with the Justice Department over his claims that his privacy rights were violated, according to his lawyers.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-medium-font-size wp-block-paragraph\">According to Strzok&#8217;s lawyers, the U.S. government has agreed to pay Strzok $1.2 million.<a href=\"https:\/\/abcnews.go.com\/Politics\/fbi-agent-peter-strzok-sues-fbi-doj-claiming\/story?id=64810632\"><\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-medium-font-size wp-block-paragraph\">In his&nbsp;<a href=\"https:\/\/abcnews.go.com\/Politics\/fbi-agent-peter-strzok-sues-fbi-doj-claiming\/story?id=64810632\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">2019 lawsuit<\/a>, Strzok and his lawyers argued that the FBI and DOJ unlawfully disclosed his private text messages disparaging Trump before and after the 2016 presidential election &#8212; including the time frame during which Strzok helped lead the agency&#8217;s investigation into former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton&#8217;s private email server and Russian meddling in the 2016 presidential election.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-medium-font-size wp-block-paragraph\">Trump, who made Strzok a frequent target on social media, argued that Strzok&#8217;s political bias tainted the early stages of the Russia investigation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-medium-font-size wp-block-paragraph\">When the DOJ&#8217;s inspector general uncovered the text messages between Strzok and then-FBI lawyer Lisa Page, Strzok was removed by Robert Mueller from the special counsel&#8217;s office to a lower-level human resources position before his eventual firing from the bureau.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-medium-font-size wp-block-paragraph\">&#8220;The FBI fired Special Agent Strzok because of his protected political speech in violation of his rights under the First Amendment to the Constitution of the United States,&#8221; the lawsuit argued.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-medium-font-size wp-block-paragraph\">In a statement following the settlement, Strzok&#8217;s attorney, Aitan Goelman, said, &#8220;This outcome is a critical step forward in addressing the government&#8217;s unfair and highly politicized treatment of Pete. As important as it is for him, it also vindicates the privacy interests of all government employees.&#8221;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-medium-font-size wp-block-paragraph\"><a href=\"https:\/\/abcnews.go.com\/Politics\/former-fbi-agent-peter-strzok-reaches-12-million\/story?id=112318094\">abcnews<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Former FBI agent Pete Strzok, who was&nbsp;fired from the bureau&nbsp;in 2018 after his disparaging text messages about Donald Trump were made public, has reached a settlement with the Justice Department over his claims that his privacy rights were violated, according to his lawyers. According to Strzok&#8217;s lawyers, the U.S. government has agreed to pay Strzok [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5,"featured_media":30152,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[1607,1795],"class_list":["post-30151","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-politics","tag-agent","tag-settlement"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/ustower.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/30151","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/ustower.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/ustower.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ustower.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/5"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ustower.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=30151"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/ustower.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/30151\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":30153,"href":"https:\/\/ustower.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/30151\/revisions\/30153"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ustower.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/30152"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/ustower.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=30151"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ustower.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=30151"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ustower.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=30151"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}