Former FBI counterintelligence agent Peter Strzok compared former President Trump’s recent attacks on the Justice Department in connection with the classified documents case to attacks by authoritarians “around the world.”
“The issue isn’t that he immediately turned to fundraising, but that he’s doing what authoritarians all over the world do,” Strzok said. I said on Sunday In an interview with MSNBC’s Alex Witt, he said: “He portrays his opponents … in flowery, frightening language as people who are out to not only get him but kill him.”
Strzok’s comments came in response to the former president falsely claiming in a fundraising email last week that President Biden and the FBI were “prepared and ready to take me out” when law enforcement searched his Mar-a-Lago estate in 2022 for classified documents.
The former president was referring to a “lethal force” policy, which actually prohibits the use of force except when “necessary” – the standard policy that applies to all searches, including the documents search at Biden’s Delaware home.
Strzok called Trump’s comments “completely false” and noted he has heard the policy statement dozens of times during his career.
The former president’s allegations prompted special counsel Jack Smith to ask Judge Eileen Cannon, who is presiding over the case, on Friday to block Trump from speaking about the incident in a way that would endanger law enforcement.
Cannon earlier this month postponed the case indefinitely, without setting a trial date and postponing some trial dates to late July, citing the need to resolve how classified documents will be presented in court.
Trump’s comments have led some to say they are worrying, with former FBI director James Comey saying it was serious that the former president was “pushing” the law, and Attorney General Merrick Garland calling his comments “extremely dangerous”.
Strzok argued that what makes Trump’s comments so sinister is that “if he returns to power, he will normalize this image and use it as justification for investigating people and rounding up those he calls vermin.”
“It normalizes the idea that the other side is trying to use violence against me, and therefore I am justified in using violence against them,” he said. “This is a disturbing development and it must stop.”
Strzok said he expected Cannon, who was appointed by Trump, to respond to Smith’s allegations and end the former president’s “outrageous behavior.”
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