Peter Strzok

Peter Paul Strzok II (, like struck; born March 7, 1970) is a former United States Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) agent.

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.

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.

He was the Deputy Assistant Director of the FBI's Counterintelligence Division and led the investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 United States elections.

Previously, he had been the chief of the division's Counterespionage Section and led the investigation into Hillary Clinton's use of a personal email server.

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 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 text message exchanges between Strzok and FBI lawyer Lisa Page contained criticisms of Trump and his supporters.

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.

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.

Strzok left the investigation in late July 2017 after the discovery of personal text messages sent to Lisa Page, an FBI lawyer, during the 2016 election campaign, which criticized Trump and said he would "stop" Trump.

At the request of Republicans in Congress, the Justice Department (DOJ) Inspector General (IG) began an inquiry in January 2017 into how the FBI handled investigations related to the election, and the IG announced it would issue a report by March or April 2018.

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.

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.

The report was eventually released on June 14, 2018, after several delays.

On June 15, 2018, the day after this IG report was published, Strzok was escorted from FBI headquarters as part of the bureau's internal conduct investigations.

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 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.

Strzok is currently an adjunct professor at Georgetown University.

He also co-hosts a podcast.

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.