Former FBI counterintelligence agent Peter Strzok compared former President Trump’s recent attacks on the Justice Department, in reference to the classified documents case, to those of authoritarians “around the world.”
“The problem is not so much that, you know, he immediately tries to raise funds with this, the problem is that he is doing what authoritarians around the world do,” Strzok said Sunday in an interview with MSNBC’s Alex Witt. “He’s classifying his opponents like this…in florid and horrible terms, as people who want to not only get him but kill him.”
Strzok’s comments come in response to the former president’s false claim in a fundraising email last week that President Biden and the FBI were “locked, loaded and ready to eliminate me” during the police search in 2022 for confidential records in his Mar-a-Lago State.
The former president was referring to the “lethal force” policy, which in reality prohibits the use of force unless it is “necessary.” It’s a standard policy applied to all searches, including the investigation of documents at Biden’s Delaware home.
Strzok said Trump’s statements were “totally false,” noting that he has heard the political statement dozens and dozens of times throughout his career.
Following the former president’s allegations, special counsel Jack Smith appealed to Judge Aileen Cannon, who is overseeing the case, on Friday to block Trump from speaking about the case in a way that could endanger law enforcement.
Cannon indefinitely postponed the case earlier this month, pushing some trial dates back to late July while refusing to set a trial date. She attributed the delay to the need to resolve how confidential documents will be presented at trial.
Others sounded the alarm following Trump’s comments, calling the rhetoric troubling. Former FBI Director James Comey said it is serious that the former president “is coming” to the institutions of justice. Attorney General Merrick Garland also called the comments “extremely dangerous.”
Strzok argued that Trump’s statement was unclear because “if and when he returns to power, he will normalize this image to provide a justification to go out and investigate people, to go out and arrest people he calls vermin.”
“It normalizes the idea that the other side is trying to use violence against me and therefore I am justified in using violence against them,” he said. “This is a worrying development and must stop.”
Strzok said he hopes Cannon, who was appointed by Trump, responds to Smith’s petition and stops the former president’s “outrageous behavior.”
This story originally appeared on thehill.com read the full story
