Left: Peter Strzok (AP Photo/Alex Brandon). Right: Lisa Page (AP Photo/Manuel Balce Ceneta).
Fired FBI agent Peter Strzok and former FBI attorney Lisa Page have agreed to a monetary settlement with the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) over claims that the 2017 release of anti-Donald Trump text messages they exchanged in 2015 and 2016 violated their privacy rights.
Following the release of the messages, Strzok was removed from then-special counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation into election interference before he was fired in 2018. Page voluntarily resigned from her position with the agency amid the throes of the controversy sparked by the release of the text messages.
Under the terms of the settlement, which was finalized on Friday, the DOJ agreed to pay Strzok $1.2 million for allegedly violating the Privacy Act by publicly releasing his personal text exchanges with Page, with whom he was romantically involved at the time.
Page will receive $800,000 as her share of the settlement, according to court documents obtained by Politico. Those documents reportedly state that despite the settlement, the federal government is not admitting to any legal liability.
“This outcome is a critical step forward in addressing the government’s unfair and highly politicized treatment of Pete,” Strzok’s attorney, Aitan Goelman, said in a statement announcing the settlement. “As important as it is for him, it also vindicates the privacy interests of all government employees. We will continue to litigate Pete’s constitutional claims to ensure that, in the future, public servants are protected from adverse employment actions motivated by partisan politics.”
The settlement agreement ends Page’s claims against the government but does not affect a separate lawsuit filed by Strzok alleging that he was unlawfully removed from the FBI to please then-President Donald Trump in violation of his rights under the Free Speech Clause of the First Amendment and in violation of the Due Process Clause of the Fifth Amendment, his attorney noted.
Strzok was grilled before Congress about his texts with Page, including one referring to an “insurance policy” months before Trump’s 2016 election win.
“I want to believe the path you threw out for consideration in Andy’s office — that there’s no way he gets elected — but I’m afraid we can’t take that risk,” Strzok’s text said. “It’s like an insurance policy in the unlikely event you die before 40.”
Page later explained that the “we” in the texts wasn’t a reference to the FBI as an institution and didn’t support Trump supporters’ claims of a concocted deep state “insurance policy” against his presidency.
“By ‘we,’ [Strzok’s] talking about the collective we: like-minded, thoughtful, sensible people who were not going to vote this person into office. You know, obviously, in retrospect, do I wish he hadn’t sent it? Yes. It’s been mutilated to death, and it’s been used to bludgeon an institution I love, and it’s meant that I’ve disappointed countless people,” she said. “But this is a snapshot in time carrying on a conversation that had happened earlier in the day that reflected a broad sense of, ‘He’s not going to be president.’ We, the democratic people of this country, are not going to let it happen.”
Page said the release of her texts only led to “two years of lies” about her and that Trump led the charge in trying to “ruin [her] life.”
Page’s attorney, Amy Jeffress, told Politico that there was “overwhelming evidence” that the release of the messages was “for partisan political purposes and was against the law.”
“While I have been vindicated by this result, my fervent hope remains that our institutions of justice will never again play politics with the lives of their employees,” Page told the news site.
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