A federal judge has given former FBI employees Peter Strzok and Lisa Page permission to question former President Donald Trump under oath for two hours. This is part of their ongoing lawsuit over Peter Strzok’s firing in 2018 after Trump publicly and often criticized the two.
Strzok and Page, whose anti-Trump text messages cast a shadow over the FBI’s investigation into possible ties between the Trump campaign and Russia, were also granted permission on Thursday to question FBI Director Christopher Wray for a similar two-hours on a constrained list of topics.
But there’s a catch: President Joe Biden’s choice may determine whether they can question Trump and Wray about these conditions. The Justice Department was given a month by Jackson’s order to “tell the Court if the current President will use… executive privilege” with regard to any of Trump’s testimony.
President Barack Obama’s appointment Jackson emphasized that she had not yet reviewed all possible arguments against the requests for Trump and Wray to testify. That might include Trump’s justifications that, as a former president, he has the unfettered authority to assert executive privilege.
Despite independent studies that failed to back up his assertions, Trump has spent years publicly criticizing Strzok and Page for their negative private texts about him, claiming they showed that FBI prejudice was behind the Russia investigation. In the midst of the uproar, Page quit, and Strzok was dismissed. Strzok is appealing his dismissal, and both men are alleging that the Justice Department’s revelation of hundreds of their text exchanges violated their right to privacy.
Strzok and Page claim in the lawsuits that Trump and his Justice Department picks were engaged in a political vendetta.
Both the Justice Department and the FBI have denied that the bureau’s decision to remove Strzok was influenced by Trump’s public criticisms, stating the decision was made by career officials and implemented without the influence of politics. Deposing Trump or Wray, they claim, would not reveal much about the choices made by other FBI personnel.
Jackson’s decision, though, raises the possibility that there may be proof that she believes only Trump and Wray can present. She said that her conclusion was based on the “apex concept,” which says that litigants must first get information from people at lower levels of an organization before getting testimony from higher-ups.
Jackson also stated that the “restricted list of themes” that will be covered in the depositions were determined in a closed session on Thursday.
