Former FBI agent wins $1.2 million in Justice Department settlement over text messages mocked by Donald Trump

The Justice Department has agreed to pay $1.2 million to settle part of a lawsuit filed by former FBI counterintelligence agent Peter Strzok over the Justice Department’s release of text messages he exchanged with Lisa Page, a colleague with whom he was romantically involved.

The deal does not fully resolve Strzok’s lawsuit, allowing him to continue to pursue allegations that he was fired for political reasons a day before his retirement date in August 2018 in order to please then-President Donald Trump.

Strzok’s attorneys announced the $1.2 million settlement on Friday as attorneys for both sides informed the court that the privacy portion of the dispute had been resolved.

“This outcome is a critical step in the fight against the government’s unfair and highly politicized treatment of Pete,” Strzok’s attorney, Aitan Goelman, said in a statement. “As important as it is to him, it also defends the privacy interests of all government employees. We will continue to litigate Pete’s constitutional claims to ensure that in the future, public employees are protected from adverse employment actions motivated by partisan politics.”

Page, an FBI lawyer who resigned amid the controversy, settled her own privacy law claim with the department on Friday; it’s unclear how much she will receive.

“The evidence was overwhelming: the release of text messages to the press in December 2017 was for partisan political purposes and was contrary to law,” Page’s attorney, Amy Jeffress, said in a statement.

“While this result proves me right, I fervently hope that our judicial institutions will never again gamble with the lives of their employees for political purposes,” Page added.

Strzok and Page became targets of Trump’s fury shortly after the texts were released, in which both officials disparaged Trump and his supporters. The two men discussed efforts to “prevent” Trump from becoming president and called some aspects of their work an “insurance policy.”

Trump also harbored suspicions about both men because of their role in the early stages of the FBI’s investigation into his 2016 presidential campaign’s ties to Russia. Trump spent years mocking Strzok and Page in crude terms about their relationship and claiming that their text messages bolstered allegations that the Russia investigation was politically motivated.

Strzok and Page have denied the allegations, saying their private political views did not influence their work on FBI issues and that many of the comments cited by Republican lawmakers and the press have been misinterpreted.

In a 2018 House hearing, Strzok said the message aimed at stopping Trump “was written late at night, off the cuff, and was in response to a series of events that included then-candidate Trump insulting the immigrant family of a fallen war hero, and my assumption, based on that horrific and disgusting behavior, that the American people would not elect someone who would engage in such behavior to be president of the United States.”

Justice Department officials shared these messages with reporters on the evening of December 12, 2017, as copies of the messages were being provided to Congress in response to requests from congressional committees.

Depositions taken during the trial indicated that the posting was approved by Assistant Attorney General Rod Rosenstein, who said he hoped sharing the messages with reporters would prevent the most inflammatory messages from being taken out of context by lawmakers. Senior career aides confirmed they approved the posting.

Rosenstein declined to comment on the deal Friday.

A Justice Department spokesman had no immediate comment on why the agency accepted the payment.

However, at a House hearing last month, following indications that a tentative deal had been reached, Republicans asked Attorney General Merrick Garland why taxpayer money was going to Strzok and Page.

“We reached settlements based on our lawyers’ assessment of our ability to win the case and the cost of losing,” Garland said. “The Privacy Act doesn’t distinguish between who we like and who we don’t like, or what information we like and what we don’t like. If someone in government discloses personal information that is protected by the Privacy Act, that’s the law that applies.”

“So according to the Justice Department, you can go after a president and be rewarded for it?” replied Jim Jordan (R-Ohio), chairman of the House Judiciary Committee.

“It’s not about rewards. It’s about the government paying for breaking the law,” Garland replied.