Peter Strzok spent his FBI career hunting Russian and Chinese spies, but after news broke of derogatory text messages he had sent about President Trump, he came to feel like he was the one being hunted, the AP reports. There were menacing phone calls and messages from strangers, and anxious peeks out window shades before his family would leave the house. FBI security experts advised him of best practices—walk around your car before entering, watch for unfamiliar vehicles in your neighborhood—more commonly associated with mob targets looking to elude detection. "Being subjected to outrageous attacks up to and including by the president himself, which are full of lies and mischaracterizations and just crude and cruel, is horrible," Strzok said.
A new book by Strzok traces his arc from veteran counterintelligence agent to the man who lost his job over text messages and came to embody Trump's public scorn of FBI. It also looks at how Strzok came to regard the Trump administration's actions regarding Russia as "highly suspicious" and the president as compromised by Russia, including because of financial dealings in Moscow about which Strzok says Trump repeatedly lied. Those concerns deepened after Trump fired James Comey as FBI director and bragged to a Russian diplomat that "great pressure" was removed. Strzok expresses measured regret for his texts in Compromised: Counterintelligence and the Threat of Donald J. Trump, due out Tuesday. Click for the full article. (See what Strzok said about Trump, Stalin, and Vladimir Putin.)