Trump scheduled to be questioned in lawsuits from ex-FBI employees who sent negative texts about him
Associated PressWASHINGTON — Donald Trump is scheduled to be questioned under oath Tuesday as part of lawsuits from two former FBI employees who provoked the former president’s outrage after sending each other pejorative text messages about him. Peter Strzok, who was a lead agent in the FBI’s investigation into ties between Russia and the 2016 Trump campaign, has alleged in a lawsuit against the Justice Department that he was wrongfully fired for exercising his First Amendment rights when he and a colleague traded anti-Trump text messages in the weeks before he became president. Both allege that the Justice Department acted under unrelenting pressure from Trump, who repeatedly lambasted the pair on social media, publicly championed Strzok’s firing and accused him of “treason.” Lawyers for the two hope to be able to prove as part of their suits that Trump’s verbal tirades and appeals for action wrongly influenced the Justice Department’s punitive actions. The text messages — in which Strzok and Page disparaged Trump as an “idiot” and “loathsome human” and called the prospect of a Trump victory “terrifying” — were discovered by the Justice Department inspector general’s office — as it scrutinized the FBI’s investigation into Hillary Clinton’s use of a private email server as secretary of state. The text messages, which were disclosed to Justice Department leadership after being discovered by the inspector general, resulted in Strzok being removed from the special counsel team conducting the Trump-Russia investigation.