Peter Strzok: Former FBI agent who opened Russia investigation sues over firing for anti-Trump texts

Ex-FBI agent says he was fired due to 'unrelenting pressure' from Donald Trump

Peter Strzok, the former FBI agent who exchanged critical private text messages about Donald Trump, has sued the FBI and US Justice Department, alleging he was fired due to “unrelenting pressure” from the president in violation of his Constitutional rights.

The lawsuit alleges he was unfairly punished for expressing his political opinions, and that the Justice Department violated his privacy when it shared hundreds of his text messages with reporters.

“The campaign to publicly vilify Special Agent Strzok contributed to the FBI’s ultimate decision to unlawfully terminate him,” the lawsuit says, “as well as to frequent incidents of public and online harassment and threats of violence to Strzok and his family that began when the texts were first disclosed to the media and continue to this day.”

The complaint, which names as defendants Attorney General William Barr and FBI Director Chris Wray, revisits a political drama that was seized on by conservative critics of special counsel Robert Mueller’s Russia investigation as proof that the bureau was biased against Mr Trump.

Multiple investigations are underway examining whether the FBI acted properly during the Russia investigation, and Mr Strzok remains a frequent target of Mr Trump’s scornful tweets.

Representatives of the FBI and Justice Department did not immediately respond to requests for comment.

The suit provides new details about the circumstances of Mr Strzok’s firing and amounts to the latest defence of his reputation, coming months after a fiery congressional hearing in which he insisted that his personal views never influenced his work.

Mr Strzok, a veteran counterintelligence agent who helped lead FBI investigations into Hillary Clinton’s use of a private email server and ties between the Trump campaign and Russia, was removed from Mr Mueller’s team after the texts with FBI lawyer Lisa Page came to light.

He was fired from the FBI last August.

Many of the texts, on FBI cell phones, were bitingly critical of Mr Trump during his 2016 run for office. They were found by the Justice Department’s inspector general during its investigation of the FBI’s Clinton email probe.

The watchdog office criticised both Mr Strzok and Ms Page, with whom he was having an affair, for their judgment in sending the messages but did not find that the Clinton email investigation was compromised by political bias.

In the lawsuit, Mr Strzok's attorney Aitan Goelman says the FBI deputy director who fired him was responding to “unrelenting pressure from President Trump and his political allies in Congress and the media.”

Additional reporting by AP