FBI Agent Peter Strzok should no longer be part of the agency following the revelations about his bias against President Donald Trump, and he should "be fired," Harvard Law Professor Alan Dershowitz said Friday.
"He is very compromised and shouldn't be an FBI agent," Dershowitz told Fox News' "America's Newsroom."
"The fact that a high-ranking FBI agent says he is going to stop a legitimate election — 'I tried to stop the election of Trump by voting against him and contributing to Hillary Clinton,' — that's a legitimate way of stopping [the election]. When an FBI agent sends a message that he will stop [the election] and has an insurance policy, that has to be investigated. I don't know why he is still an FBI agent. He should be fired."
Meanwhile, Dershowitz said there has "never been a more important time for our system of checks and balances to operate," while the deadline has arrived for the Department of Justice to turn over documents related to the Russia investigation and the probe into Hillary Clinton's email server.
Republican lawmakers have said they want to either hold Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein in contempt of Congress or to seek his impeachment if the House does not get the documents. House Speaker Paul Ryan on Thursday said he expects compliance, and that the matter could have been solved months ago.
"Whether it be regarding the president's immigration policies or the Mueller investigation or the Clinton investigation, we need effective checks and balances, and effective checks and balances requires that the executive branch, the Justice Department comply with legitimate subpoenas by Congress," said Dershowitz. "If it's necessary to issue a contempt order it should be done. It's rare for the legislature to hold a member of the executive in contempt but it has been done"
However, he does think the threat is often made to force compliance, and he suspects that will happen in this case, but if the DOJ resists, "we may see drama."
Dershowitz said he believes the DOJ may not want to surrender the paperwork because the government wishes to avoid embarrassment.
"In my long experience with these matters, when the government claims national security much of the time it's to avoid embarrassment," said Dershowitz. "There are not really national security secrets involved. For example, they failed to turn over the smoking gun Strzok communicated in which he said we'll stop the election of President Trump. That wasn't turned over. There is no national security there. It was just because it was incredibly embarrassing and hard to believe the story they found one of the messages, but they didn't find the more important one."
It is important, though, that Congress enforces its request for the documents, because the public has the right to know what is in them, said Dershowitz.
"Even if there are materials that are national security, Congress has the right to see those, subject to secrecy, and a decision has to be made when and how much to reveal to the general public," said Dershowitz.
He also said he does not see any criminal problems for people involved in Inspector General John Horowitz's report.
"There are legal problems," Dershowitz said. "I don't see any criminal problems. I'm in favor of decriminalizing and stop weaponizing the criminal justice system. I didn't see any cause for criminal investigation and prosecution. Certainly the revelation that [James] Comey was using his email in the manner in which he had criticized Hillary Clinton for using her email, that's worthy of further investigation by the IG.
He added that there are conflicts of interest worthy of further investigation.
"I think the whole Rosenstein issue is worthy of investigation," said Dershowitz. "If [Robert] Mueller is looking at all at the Comey firing, who was the main witness there? The main witness is the man who is investigating this and in charge of the investigation is Rod Rosenstein. So yes, legal but not criminal."
Sandy Fitzgerald ✉
Sandy Fitzgerald has more than three decades in journalism and serves as a general assignment writer for Newsmax covering news, media, and politics.
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