(FreedomBeacon.com)- Peter Strzok, a former agent with the FBI who was fired from the agency back in 2018 for disparaging Donald Trump in a text message exchange, said recently that Trump and some of his associates could face new indictments in the near future.
His comments were made after Merrick Garland, the U.S. attorney general, announced last week that he would be appointing a special counsel to oversee the Department of Justice’s investigations related to the Capitol riot on January 6 of 2021.
Jack Smith, who has spent his entire career as a prosecutor and even once headed up the DOJ’s Public Integrity Section, was appointed by Garland to serve in the role. As special master, Smith will be tasked with overseeing all investigations at the DOJ related to the January 6, 2021, riot as well as the handling of all classified documents that were taken from Trump’s Mar-a-Lago estate in Florida over the summer.
Appearing on the program “Deadline” White House,” Strzok was asked by the host Nicolle Wallace whether Trump was facing a criminal investigation. Strzok responded:
“I think that’s certainly one of the implications. A lot of the criticism of what special counsel Mueller did, people don’t understand, were key to what he was limited to do by the scope of his appointment order. And, I’m very interested to see if DOJ does publish … the new special counsel’s order, because that will give us an idea how broad the scope of his investigations are.”
In announcing the appointment of Smith as special counsel last Friday, Garland said it was done because of potential conflicts of interest that could pop up. That’s because Trump just announced last Tuesday that he was running for president in 2024, and it’s widely expected that President Joe Biden will also run for re-election.
That means it’s possible that Biden could try to influence Garland — who reports directly to the president — to handle the Trump investigations in a certain way to try to make his challenger look weak, or to try to prevent him from running altogether.
Garland wanted no part of that potential conflict to arise, which is why he appointed a special master to oversee the investigations.
Strzok said that he believed Garland’s decision and comments meant he was looking at the former president’s conduct. As he explained:
“From the attorney general’s comments, it certainly to me implied that it included Donald Trump’s conduct, but more importantly, as importantly, it included potentially a large number of other people around him. Folks like Mark Meadows, Roger Stone, Ali Alexander, you know, Michael Flynn, Patrick Bern and Roger Stone, on and on and on and on.
“These folks who were at — John Eastman and Jeffrey Clark — these people who were at the very close circle around Trump, from what the attorney general said, all of those investigations, and any potential prosecutions relating to those investigations, are also going to be taken on by this new special counsel.”
Strzok is a little biased in his thinking, of course. After all, he was fired back in 2018 after it emerged that he sent texts to his mistress Lisa Page, who was an attorney for the FBI, that disparaged Trump while he was investigating the alleged collusion between Russia and Trump’s campaign.
