Fired FBI agent Peter Strzok has claimed that some of his letters and texts were “altered” before they were submitted as evidence by lawyers fighting to clear former national security adviser Michael Flynn.
Flynn’s lawyers had included the messages in a fresh filing last Thursday, claiming they proved “outrageous, deliberate misconduct by FBI and DOJ — playing games with the life of a national hero.”
But a lawyer for Strzok — one of the special agents who interviewed Flynn about Russian “collusion” — wrote to the judge Monday insisting that some of the documents “appear to have been altered.”
“On at least two occasions, there were handwritten additions, not written by Mr. Strzok, inserting dates, apparently designed to indicate the date or dates on which the notes were written,” wrote his attorney, Aitan Goelman.
The letter to US District Judge Emmet Sullivan included two of the notes, highlighting in yellow how dates appeared to be different penmanship.
“On at least one occasion, the date added is wrong and could be read to suggest that a meeting at the White House happened before it actually did,” Goelman said.
Other unreleased texts included in the filing “have nothing to do with the Flynn case or, more broadly, with the Department of Justice,” he wrote, also claiming the timing of the filing violated a court order.
Strzok — who was fired amid the scandal of his texts showing a clear anti-Trump bias — personally addressed the filing late Monday.
“Disappointed to see the undisclosed addition of handwritten dates in copies of my notes DOJ turned over to Flynn’s defense team, including a misleading perception helpful to the defense,” he tweeted.
“Hoping they told the Court, because it was a surprise to me.”
Flynn’s legal team had claimed that the messages showed “how zealously” Strzok was “working to oppose Trump’s election and subvert the peaceful transfer of power” during the investigation.
“There was no case against General Flynn. There was no crime. The FBI and the prosecutors knew that,” the filing argued.
“This American hero and his entire family have suffered for four years from public abuse, slander, libel, and all means of defamation at the hands of the very government he pledged his life to defend.”