Congressman Cohen Questions Rationale for Strzok Hearing

WASHINGTON – Congressman Steve Cohen (TN-09), the Ranking Member of the House Judiciary Subcommittee on the Constitution and Civil Law, today questioned the Majority's rationale for seeking the testimony of FBI Agent Peter Strzok after the Department of Justice's Inspector General found no evidence of bias impacting its work on the Hillary Clinton email investigation. See his exchange with Strzok here.

According to the Inspector General's report, "We found no evidence that the conclusions by the prosecutors were affected by bias or other improper considerations; rather, we determined that they were based on the prosecutors' assessment of the facts, the law, and past Department practice."

Congressman Cohen noted that much of Stzrok's work in the FBI was in counterintelligence and resulted in indictments that uncovered a Russian KGB spy ring that became the basis for the FX television series The Americans, and made the following statement:

"You've dedicated your life to working…against that type of effort to subvert our democracy and undermine it. I thank you for that…

"There's no reason for this hearing – no reason at all. But it puts it on the front page again and again and again. And as you said earlier, the Russians are loving it because this is what they want…

"This is nothing but a ruse to try to get to the Mueller investigation and make people think it's baseless, that it's biased, that it's 13 Democrats that are working on this and they're prejudiced, and they're discriminatory and they're biased. Just as Jack Nicholson said in the movie A Few Good Men: ‘You can't handle the truth.' And the truth is this is the most corrupt administration ever and it's going to be exposed by Robert Mueller, thank God."

###