FBI draft letter firing anti-Trump agent Peter Strzok: 'Sustained pattern of bad judgment'

A senior FBI official accused the anti-Trump former FBI agent Peter Strzok of "repeated, sustained errors of judgment," which calls into question many of the bureau's decisions involving high-ranking political cases, according to a newly released 2018 draft letter firing him for misconduct.

Then-Deputy FBI Director David Bowdich wrote in the 2018 letter, published in a court filing Thursday, that Strzok's text messages with FBI lawyer Lisa Page, who he was having an affair with and expressed anti-Trump views to on his official government phone, made it "difficult to imagine another incident ... which brought so much discredit to the organization."

While the agency's inspector general did not find evidence of Strzok's bias impacting FBI investigations, Bowdich said Strzok's "sustained pattern of bad judgment in the use of an FBI device has called into question for many the decisions made during both the Clinton e-mail investigation and the initial states of the Russian Collusion investigation."

Strzok served as lead agent in the investigation of the since-debunked accusations that former President Donald Trump colluded with Russia in the 2016 election and in the probe of then-Secretary of State Hillary Clinton's use of her personal email server to send and receive classified information. 

"While there is no doubt your 21 years of service to the organization cannot and should not be erased, it is difficult to fathom the repeated, sustained errors of judgment you made while serving as the lead agent in two of the most high profile investigations in the country," Bowdich said.

The then-deputy director said that over his more than two decades at the FBI, he had "not seen a more impactful series of missteps which called into question the entire organization and more thoroughly damaged the reputation of the organization" as Strzok's actions.