I wish I had read this Anne Applebaum interview with Peter Strzok before I wrote the previous post. Oh well.
It is extremely interesting and I think I’m going to have to read his book. The record on this whole thing has been completely confused and I think this book may hold important clues about how to go back and look at everything that happened.
Applebaum:
As I read Strzok’s book, I found myself unexpectedly angry, because his narrative exposes an extraordinary failure: Despite multiple investigations by the FBI, Congress, and Mueller’s team, Americans have still never learned the full story about the Trump campaign’s relationship with Russia or Trump’s own decades-long financial ties with Russia. Four years have passed since the investigation began. Many people have been convicted of crimes. Nevertheless, portions of reports produced by Mueller, the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, and others remain redacted. Investigations are allegedly ongoing. Details remain secret. Meanwhile, valuable FBI time and money were spent investigating which email server Hillary Clinton used—a question that, as it turned out, had no implications for U.S. security whatsoever.
Strzok himself was not exactly reassuring: He does not believe that Trump’s true relationship with Russia was ever revealed, and he now worries that it won’t ever be. It’s not clear that anyone ever followed up on the leads he had, or completed the counterintelligence investigation he began. He doesn’t say this himself, but after speaking with him I began to wonder if this is the real reason the Department of Justice broke with precedent in his case by not just firing a well-respected FBI agent but publicly discrediting him too: Strzok was getting too close to the truth.
An excerpt:
Applebaum: Do you think that the president’s deeply personal attacks on you, McCabe, Alexander Vindman, and others will scare public servants in the future? Will they be more cautious, less likely to investigate powerful people?
Strzok: I know from people I keep in touch with that the personal attacks have had a chilling effect on employees in the government and, I have to imagine, on those considering public service. There’s no way it couldn’t. That’s the goal.
It’s not that government servants lack courage or don’t want to do the right thing. It’s that Trump has shattered the norms of presidential behavior in a way that impacts not just individuals, but governmental organizations themselves. Neither can protect themselves in ways that have worked in the past. The investigative independence of the FBI is under severe stress, but I think it’s holding. I worry four more years of Trump threatens significant, long-term harm.
It’s not just Trump. It’s partisans in Congress and in the media, and the online harassment and even outright death threats they inspire. Remember, Trump told [Ukrainian President Volodymyr] Zelensky that [U.S. Ambassador Marie] Yovanovitch was “going to go through some things.” Now Trump darkly crows about the investigation of the investigators, with a menacing refrain of “We’ll see what happens.” Nothing is off-limits. This is the behavior of authoritarians.
We’re numb to all this now. He has turned the US Government into the manifestation of a toxic twitter troll feed that you cannot ignore. But we really can’t just look away. Some of this damage will be permanent if the Democrats manage to win and they refuse to take a deep dive into what happened here. He has taken a wrecking ball to our country.
Click on page 2 for the whole interview.
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