The Peter Strzok Irony

Elizabeth "Liz" Cheney, daughter of the man whotwisted and distorted intelligence to persuade President Bush to invade Iraq, on Sunday told Martha Raddatz of ABC News

I think what is really crucially important to remember here is that you had Strzok and Paige who were in charge of launching this investigation and they were saying things like we must stop this president, we need an insurance policy against this president. That in my view when you have people that are in the highest echelons of the law enforcement of this nation saying things like that, that sounds an awful lot like a coup and it could well be treason.

I know what you're saying: the investigation was launched because in May, 2016 George Papadopoulos popped off in a London bar to an Australian diplomat about dirt which Russians had on Hillary Clinton (which turned out to be accurate); Strzok was removed early from the Mueller investigation; there is no indication Strzok ever allowed his political beliefs to interfere with his work; treason is providing "aid and comfort" to an "enemy" and Russia is not an official enemy; the investigation was conducted of a political candidate and not the President; and

They must have been pretty bad at coup-ing, since Comey & the FBI never revealed to the public that there was investigation into the Trump campaign's contacts with Russia ahead of the election. https://t.co/BfYAjn4IIo

— Joyce Alene (@JoyceWhiteVance) May 27, 2019

The outcry expressed by Cheney (and other Republicans) over Strzok's involvement is the most disingenuous outrage since (choose wisely) a) then-NJ governor Christine Todd Whitman compared NJTV to "Pravda;" or b) President Trump two years ago claimed he fired the FBI director because James Comey had mistreated Hillary Clinton.

New Jersey public television was fairly subservient to Whitman; and Donald Trump probably would not have been elected had James Comey not broken tradition by labeling Hillary Clinton "extremely careless" and announcing nine days before the election an examination of suspect emails which already had been examined. And if FBI agent Peter Strzok had not been overly generous to candidate Trump, it is unlikely Trump would have been elected, even with Comey's effort to bend over backwards for the Republican. The Washington Post's Philip Bump wrote twenty-twp months ago

In a written statement offered before he testified before the House Oversight Committee on Thursday, Strzok pointedly noted that there was no effort on his part to keep Trump from winning the White House — and, further, that he was one of only a few people who could have potentially leaked details from the investigation in an effort to block Trump’s victory.

“In the summer of 2016,” Strzok wrote, “I was one of a handful of people who knew the details of Russian election interference and its possible connections with members of the Trump campaign. This information had the potential to derail, and quite possibly, defeat Mr. Trump. But the thought of exposing that information never crossed my mind.”

Of course it didn't, because Peter Strzok was a professional. Republican criticism of Strzok neatly fits the classic example of "chutzpah"- a man on trial for killing his parents pleads demands lenience because he's an orphan.

Liz Cheney, who knows the investigation into the Trump campaign was not a coup and was 180 degrees from treason, is the apple that did not fall far from the venomous tree.

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