DOJ Releases More Information About Strzok in Motion to Dismiss His Lawsuit Against Them

Strzok filed suit, laughably, challenging the DOJ's determination that he should be fired.

The Department of Justice released documents Monday outlining a slew of "security violations" and flagrantly "unprofessional conduct" by anti-Trump ex-FBI agent Peter Strzok -- including his alleged practice of keeping sensitive FBI documents on his unsecured personal electronic devices, even as his wife gained access to his cellphone and discovered evidence that he was having an affair with former FBI attorney Lisa Page.

The DOJ was seeking to dismiss Strzok's lawsuit claiming he was unfairly fired and deserves to be reinstated as chief of the counterespionage division at the FBI. In its filing, the DOJ included an August 2018 letter to Strzok from the DOJ's Office of Professional Responsibility (OPR), which said in part that Strzok had engaged in a "dereliction of supervisory responsibility" by failing to investigate the potentially classified Hillary Clinton emails that had turned up on an unsecured laptop belonging to Anthony Weiner as the 2016 election approached.

The situation became so dire, OPR said, that a case agent in New York told federal prosecutors there that he was "scared" and "paranoid" that "somebody was not acting appropriately" and that "somebody was trying to bury this."

...

Additionally, DOJ and OPR noted that although Strzok claimed to have "double deleted" sensitive FBI materials from his personal devices, his wife nonetheless apparently found evidence of his affair on his cellphone -- including photographs and a hotel reservation "ostensibly" used for a "romantic encounter." Strzok didn't consent to turning over the devices for review, according to OPR, even as he acknowledged using Apple's iMessage service for some FBI work.

"[My wife] has my phone. Read an angry note I wrote but didn't send you. That is her calling from my phone. She says she wants to talk to [you]. Said we were close friends nothing more," one of Strzok's text to Page read, according to the filing.

...

Strzok's wife allegedly threatened to send Page's husband some of the photographs from Strzok's phone.

One quick vocabularly point: I've never trusted myself to use the word "ostensibly" because I wasn't sure if it meant apparently or supposedly/purportedly.

And that's a big difference; it's it's "apparently," that means it's your own take on the evidence; if it's "supposedly," that's someone else trying to push their take on you.

Turns out, it means both -- either apparently or supposedly, but not necessarily actually.

Here's the etymology, which suggests it started out as mostly meaning "purportedly:"

1730, "capable of being shown, that can be shown or seen, presentable," from French ostensible, from Latin ostens-, past-participle stem of ostendere "to show, expose to view; to stretch out, spread before; exhibit, display," from assimilated form of ob "in front of" (see ob-) + tendere "to stretch," from PIE root *ten- "to stretch." Meaning "apparent, professed, put forth or held out as real" is from 1771.

So if that one's been bothering you, you're welcome.

Below, some tweets containing screenshots of the filing.

posted by Ace of Spades at 06:00 PM

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