Peter Strzok: Trump's Classified Documents Case

Ken Harbaugh:

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Peter Strzok:

At some point, even traditionally, if you're drawn to the Republican Party, your sense of duty to the nation and the people of the nation, and the constitution of the nation is stronger than that of like some party doing crazy things on behalf of a man who it seems clear to me cares nothing about duty to the public, cares nothing about the nation.

Ken Harbaugh:

I'm Ken Harbaugh, and this is Burn the Boats.

My guest today is Peter Strzok, who served as deputy assistant director of the FBI's Counterintelligence Division and led the investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 election.

He was also, chief of the division's counter espionage section and is the author of the New York Times bestseller Compromised: Counterintelligence and the Threat of Donald J. Trump.

Pete, welcome to the show.

Peter Strzok:

Ken, thanks so much. Great to be with you.

Ken Harbaugh:

In all of your years at the FBI, did you ever imagine a day would come when it was the Republican party that was pushing to defund law enforcement, attack our agencies, and undermine the rule of law itself, by the way, all to protect one very guilty person.

Peter Strzok:

No, never. And I mean, I think that if you look at the bureaus, my personal history, and my family with my parents, my father's from rural Wisconsin, my mother from rural North Carolina, very strong Republican backgrounds.

Looking at the FBI, going back, not just to my time there, I started in 1996, but you go back to the days of Hoover and the post World War II period, and traditionally that entire span, kind of the settling of the parties as we understand today, the Republican Party was always the party out in front arguing for strong national defense, for strong law and order.

And that was true for literally generations. And it was true during the time I served.

Again, political parties are not in my experience in the Bureau, and I think anyone you'd talked to in the FBI, it's not a discussed thing, it's not an over thing. Politics don't come up. It's not like you sit around in the squad bay or go out for lunch and talk about some campaign. It just didn't happen.

But despite that, it was very clear that it is an extraordinarily conservative organization.

So, the one to see this sort of flipping just again, which lines up exactly with the rise of Donald Trump, of the Republican party, from what traditionally had been a, we are strongly for the principle of advancing democracy around the world, of leading that effort of standing up against tyrants, against authoritarians and believers in the FBI.

And suddenly to have the entire party flip again, in my opinion, I agree with you, for one man because of Donald Trump and nothing else so completely, is surprising and I could never have imagined that.

Ken Harbaugh:

The FBI, I have to imagine like the military is, as you said, conservative, not just politically, but by temperament. I mean, it's not like in the FBI and in the military, you're rewarded for pushing the envelope and trying to rewrite the rules. It is conservative by design.

It has a set parameters it needs to operate within. But the military is beginning to experience a shift, at least on the political side of that conservatism ledger. And you see veterans and active-duty military beginning to turn against the party that was once the party of national security.

Do you see any indications of that within the FBI, within law enforcement more broadly, as it becomes more and more obvious that the Republican party isn't really about law and order, they're just about going after the people they hate?

Peter Strzok:

Yeah, it's a really interesting parallel that you draw, and I think it's accurate. And I think I've thought about this some. And the culture is very similar. I mean, it was very, coming out of the military, going into the FBI, it felt culturally, I mean, it wasn't identical, but it was very similar.

And I think a lot of that, to your point, you can boil it down to a number of things, but I think one of the primary things is that both entities at the end of the day train to employ lethal force, whether that is in the military to go and fight wars, whether that's in the FBI ultimately.

I put on a gun loaded round in the chamber every single day I went to work with the expectation that I might be called upon to use that.

So, anytime you put somebody and professionally train them into a spot where you are giving them the awesome authority and responsibility of potentially taking somebody else's life, you by necessity have to have a chain of command, a respect for the chain of command, a formal sort of structure that creates the sort of guardrails around that awesome responsibility.

So, I think there's a similarity there. And of course it's very different. I mean, I'm not trying to suggest that fighting a war is anywhere near going out and arresting somebody or vice versa.

But I think at the end of the day, to your point, the people who do the job in the military and the FBI are largely there because they love the work, because they're drawn to it. Because a sense of duty provides satisfaction and happiness to what they're doing.

And so, that is that mission, that calling to serve. And calling to serve in the context of carrying arms for your nation. I think that is a stronger calling, that duty to the Constitution than any particular party.

So, my sense is whoever you are, wherever you are, whether in the Air Force or the Coast Guard or the FBI field office somewhere in the US, if you are drawn to that sort of duty and you see somebody undermining those very values.

Even traditionally if you're drawn to the Republican party because they tended to support that in the past, at some point, if their party is no longer doing that, your sense of duty to the nation and the people of the nation and the constitution of the nation is stronger than that of like some party doing crazy things on behalf of a man who, it seems clear to me, cares nothing about the nation.

Cares nothing about duty to the public, knows nothing about civics, could care less about his oath of office. And is there entirely to advance and protect himself and has corrupted an entire party to enable him to do that.

So, that's a very long answer of saying I think in the FBI much like in DOD, that they're good people there and they understand BS when they see it. And they understand that at the end of the day, you can only bend so far before you start undermining the very things that you're supposed to stand for as a party.

And so, again, it isn't I'm going to vote this way or vote that way. Just never talked about that in the Bureau. But I think people are smart enough. They're investigators and like an officer, a non-commissioned officer, an enlisted man or woman in the service is going to be able to see the same thing.

And so, I hope the reassuring thing is whatever they think of a potential party, I think at the end of the day, the average servicewoman or serviceman, or FBI agent, or analyst, whoever, still looks to their duty to the constitution ahead of their duty to any one man.

Ken Harbaugh:

Well, people should know that you wore both uniforms, the suit of an FBI agent, and you were in the 101st Airborne as an artilleryman for four years before that. So, you're speaking from a place of real experience on this.

What happens to an institution like the FBI? Because I'm seeing it happen in the military (I still stay in touch with my friends who are in uniform) when political leaders come out guns blazing, attacking the credibility of the public servants within those institutions, making up stories for purely political lens. How does it affect morale in an organization like the FBI?

Peter Strzok:

I think it has a couple impacts. I mean, one is exactly what you said there. It is demoralizing. There's no way I think any good and every agent I know, investigator I know, hears the noise and just says, “You know what, tune it out and focus on your job.”

And you can say that and believe that and try to do it, but it doesn't take away the impact of like every time you turn on Fox News or listen to some soundbite coming out of Trump on the even other far right networks, it doesn't help but hurt morale and sort of the having to put up with it.

And there's a more direct impact. I mean, that's just the personal like having to like well, tune out the noise, but the real thing is like the FBI in large measure relies on the confidence of the public to achieve its job.

When you go knock on somebody's door, when you show up and make a phone call and say, “Hey, I need your help. I would like to talk to you.”

Historically 80, 90% of what the bureau has done is because of cooperation to people in the public because of their belief that the bureau is there to investigate violations of the federal law to look after the national security of the United States and they believe in the FBI and what they're doing. And so, they agree to help because it's a righteous thing.

But when you've got, I don't think it's 50%, but I think 30% of the political spectrum, who's tuned into every last word coming out of Donald Trump's mouth, including that the FBI is out there to try and kill him, people are less inclined to help.

So, literally that is putting America's ability to investigate and prosecute federal crimes. Trump's statements and his enablers are putting that in danger, are jeopardizing that, or hurting that.

And finally, it is again, of that 30% who support, the diehard Trumpers, most of them I think would never resort to violence, but there are those with mental health challenges, those extremists who hear those words and decide to take up arms.

And you get people showing up at FBI field officers with weapons and threatening agents. So, it's a very pernicious set of things that happen when you get not just Trump and an entire party engaging in that sort of behavior.

Ken Harbaugh:

I want to talk about that last piece because it feels like we have crossed some kind of Rubicon where the rhetoric on the one political end of the spectrum is actually undermining the safety of field agents.

Not just their ability to do their jobs, not just the likelihood that someone's going to answer the door when the FBI comes knocking and help them out. But you actually have people taking shots at FBI agents.

We had here in Ohio, someone trying to shoot up, I think it was the Cincinnati field office, and was killed because he was an imminent threat. He had a gun, he was taking shots.

And now, you have the former president of the United States amplifying a conspiracy theory that the FBI raided Mar-a-Lago with the intent to assassinate him.

Can you give us, first of all, the 32nd version of that piece of disinformation, and then we'll talk about the implications?

Peter Strzok:

Sure. So, I mean, it's absurdly irresponsible for the president to say what he said. I mean, every single time, every instance in which the FBI conducts a search warrant, conducts an arrest warrant, there's an operations plan that's briefed.

Even if sometime it's formal and it's written on, everybody gets a little passed out piece of paper. Other times it's just sit there kind of like if you're in the army like an op order, everybody kind of gathers around and somebody just goes through the elements of information.

But each and every one, every single time, the FBI's deadly force policy is briefed. And essentially, again going back to the point about this awesome responsibility of the authority to use lethal force, it is very restrictive.

I mean, it goes through and limits the times where an agent may use deadly force and it's only when certain things occur. Dozens probably shoot more than 50. I couldn't even count up how many times hearing that again and again and again.

But the point is to reinforce to the agents that, look, you carry a weapon, but you don't have free reign to just use it however you think, whenever you might feel threatened.

There are a very specific limited piece of a set of circumstances, and it's an imminent threat of death or serious bodily injury to either yourself or somebody else. And so, again, I mean, I can recite it in my head just having heard it.

But so, for this, for Trump, for the search of Mar-a-Lago, which the FBI deliberately planned to do when Trump wasn't there.

Waited for him to leave, coordinated with the secret service in advance, went in in plain clothes, not raid jackets, not in vehicles with lights flashing, just very quietly and discreetly designed to come in and do that search when he wasn't even around.

Then you get again, and Trump being Trump, but I in this case particularly hold a certain amount of anger towards his attorneys, two of which were former federal prosecutors, who misquoted that deadly force policy to make it sound more expansive than it was.

And the impact is, again, when you then have Trump saying, “They were trying to assassinate me,” and everybody picking up, you immediately saw like Paul Gosar and Marjorie Taylor Greene, and Fox News, and OAN and everybody picks it up and all over Twitter and social media saying, “The FBI, were they trying to kill Trump?”

No, they absolutely weren't, is the first thing for those reasons. But two, the problem is, I think Trump is doing it for two reasons. One is it came out in a fundraising email. So, he is using it to raise money.

But then the other thing is there are people who hear that, who don't know any better, who potentially have, to your point about the gentleman who showed up at the FBI Cincinnati field office, clearly had some mental health challenges.

And people like I think back to, there's a guy named Cesar Sayoc, who was a Trump devotee and went to several events. And he, upon hearing Trump decided that he was going to start building explosive devices and sent them to CNN, sent them to I think General Clapper, and a bunch of folks.

Those are the people that, again, I don't know that Trump is saying this with a design to speak to them, to get them to engage in action, but he certainly is aware of it.

And Sayoc’s in jail now, for God knows how long. I mean, easily 10, 15 plus years. But this is beyond the question you asked.

When I think about the danger of a future Trump presidency, a lot of people are spending time talking about, well, he would weaponize DOJ, he would weaponize the FBI. And I think that's true, but I do think there are limitations, even if he did try and weaponize it to what he could do.

I'm particularly worried not so much about anybody in the government, but the quasi-militia sort of folks with their couple of friends with weapons who go out and train on the weekends, who view themselves as a self-styled militia who feel encouraged to engage in some sort of like vigilante retribution.

And if Trump says, “Well, I can only do so much, but you know who the enemies are, you go take care of it.” That's when you ask me like what worries me the most about the prospect of a future Trump administration?

There are plenty of things in the government that he could do that worry me, but it's particularly this. How he could incite … and he did the Proud Boys stand back and stand by, down in Charlottesville. And oh, they're good people on both sides.

Trump is very well aware of the people outside of the government who listen to what he says and do things that they perceive he is asking them to do.

So, when Trump says things like the FBI was trying to assassinate me, that immediately creates a physical risk to FBI agents, to prosecutors, to judges.

And don't even get me started on Aileen Cannon upon hearing that the government asked for, “Hey, judge, your honor, can we modify Trump's terms of release, so he doesn't say things like this.” She first like yells at them for a little, like, “Well, I didn't like the form and the way you talked to the defense. And okay, I'm going to get to in about three weeks.”

God forbid somebody dies or gets attacked in the interim because she will literally have blood on her hands. And I cannot explain it, I cannot excuse it.

We can talk about her if you want, but the short takeaway is when Trump says things like that, it greatly increases the threat environment that FBI personnel face. And he knows that at this point, and I don't think he cares.

Ken Harbaugh:

I do want to talk about Aileen Cannon, it's actually in my show notes because it's something you have tackled on your show, and I would just love an explanation of what is going on with the request from Jack Smith to try to limit the kinds of provocations that Trump as a defendant can issue threats to law enforcement.

You’ve also made the comparison to threats to jurors in the hush money case. I mean, another Rubicon that we've crossed. We almost never attack the jury for a verdict. Defendants and counsel tend to go after the system and the prosecution.

But Trump has obliterated all of those norms, and he has the aid and he's being abetted by Trump appointed judges like Aileen Cannon.

Peter Strzok:

I think that's right. And I don't know what to make of Cannon. I mean, she's not dumb. She may well be in over her head. I think she has created a unmanageable case. She clerked as an appellate level, I think at a federal circuit court.

And so, I think her by design intentionally or not, she's thinking about things not as a district trial court judge, but from an appellate level that she's introducing unnecessary and unneeded complexity into a process which even if giving her the benefit of the doubt and saying, okay, she wants to be cautious, she wants to get it right, time and time again, she has excoriated prosecutors in a way that she has not the defense.

And the defense has done some truly outrageous things to include, again, these Trump statements about the FBI trying to kill me. And at the end of the day, most courts recognize officer safety. In particular, if somebody's doing something where they're putting law enforcement or prosecutors at risk, they're going to stamp that out right away to include …

Imagine somebody who's a cartel leader in trial in Dallas somewhere and is doing things like that and making statements that FBI agents are trying to kill him, it would not stand.

And the problem I have with Cannon is I think if the defendant was not Donald Trump, but was Pablo Martinez, head of some notional cartel who had been brought to her district, she would have thrown the book at him by this point. And she is not out a deference to the presidency, but a deference to Trump.

And she has done all this in a way that she got slapped when she appointed a special master to review the material that had been seized by Mar-a-Lago.

The 11th circuit upon appealing by the government, said, “No, there's no basis for this. Stop it. Turn all the material over to the government.” And did it, not gently, but like a very strong rebuke to her. So, I think she's well aware of that.

I think she's been very careful to do and not do things in a way that doesn't give the government a potential opportunity for interlocutory appeal. To take in the middle of trial to say, “Stop, we're going to the 11th circuit.” 11th circuits make her change what she did.

She's been very careful not to do anything to give the government that foothold, let alone, in my opinion, sufficient reason the government can go to the circuit court and say, “You need to remove her because she's biased, or she's incompetent.” Again, the legal experts have read, she hasn't done it. So, she's smart enough not to cross those lines.

What she has done is there's no way this case, absolutely none, goes to trial before the election. I would be surprised if it goes. If Trump is reelected, it's gone. Jack Smith has dissolved. We will never see a trial in DC, we'll never see a trial in Florida.

If Biden is reelected, I'd still be surprised to see this trial before the summer of 2025.

So, I think she is not up to the moment. I think some of that is because she's new, but she certainly … you're still a judge and you still there are people you can consult. You have clerks. She's not risen to the moment.

And I think it's also, telling of all the screaming and howling about Judge Merchan up in New York, or Judge Chutkan in DC, or Fani Willis in Atlanta, on all the outrage from the right. And Judge Ingram in the civil trial.

All the yelling and screaming by Trump, by Don. Jr, by everybody around him, there's been not a peep about Aileen Cannon from the right. Not a word, not a word, not a single.

And that's telling, because it's clearly if I see you as doing positive things for me and acting in my favor, I'm not going to say anything negative. But the minute you cross me, I'm going to start raging against you and engaging this entire apparatus against you.

And setting aside discussion of what the judges are doing, just look at Trump and the entire group around him and say, who are they talking about? Who are they not talking about? And you can see where the problem is.

Ken Harbaugh:

Well, in that New York case, they're now, going after the jurors, at least the people around Trump. There's a concerted effort to identify them, to dox them. In some ways, that's even more terrifying.

There's no justification for attacking a judge, especially attacking a judge's daughter. But in some ways, you kind of expect that. You don't sign up for it but it's not a shock when it happens.

But as an ordinary citizen called upon to do your duty sitting with 11 others in that jury box to realize that you're going to have to look over your shoulder for the rest of your life.

I don't even know how to process that except to say that those jurors are heroic in a way few jurors are called upon to be. Maybe in a mob case, right? That's the closest analog we have.

Peter Strzok:

Yeah, I absolutely agree with you. I mean, hats off to the jurors. They made up by the descriptions that came out from the media, which did limit their descriptions of its time and cross section in New York.

I mean, folks who were first generation immigrants. The foreman was from Ireland. They had, I think some South Asian or East Asian of ethnic descent folks on the jury. You had people who had law degrees, you had people who had college degrees. I mean, it was America and the Manhattan slice of that.

So, you can't complain that it was not representative of New York. I think it absolutely was. Some jurors during voir dire, during the jury selection left essentially because they didn't want the impact. They were concerned about the impact by their family, by the community, and said they couldn't serve.

There was one juror who I think had concerns and was persuaded to stick with it and stay in. I think she did. And kudos to her.

But you're right, and people forget it may diminish over time, but it never goes away. And it's not going to be the case where one of those New York jurors in 2026 is not thinking about it and happy, carefree, like they were before.

That sort of alertness of their surroundings and concern about what may come from somebody out for vengeance on behalf of Trump, that's something they got to carry with him.

And again, that is such a perverse undermining … when you think about what's civic duty, in my mind, serving in the military, serving on a jury.

These core public service, these core civic virtues that at least I was or I'm sure you were raised with, most of your listeners probably remember, when you think of like what does it mean to participate in our democracy? Jury service is one of those primary things.

And hats off to the jurors who did it. And God, that they should have to pay the price that they will continue to pay.

And again, not because they were after some LCN mob boss, not because they were after some cartel boss, because they dared look at this felon of a former president, and they're having to face it. It's in Congress and it just kind of highlights how horrible and indecent Trump is as a person.

Ken Harbaugh:

What line will the president have to cross, will his party have to cross to finally motivate the senior former figures in his last administration to speak out?

I'm thinking mostly of the four-star types because I'm part of Veterans for Responsible Leadership. We're out there in the trenches, taking the fight to Trump. And we're getting encouragement from some of these four-stars, but they're doing it from the safety of their think tanks, of their consultancies.

That's how I know we are right, because they're cheering us on. But what's it going to take for senior former Trump officials in unison to speak out publicly about how dangerous he would be in a second term?

Peter Strzok:

That's a great question. I have the same concern and frustration that you do. I think General Kelly, and particularly and personally, his story was the thing that he was aware of Trump doing and saying in his righteous contempt.

The comments I think about in the Atlantic magazine about Trump's trip to France on the D-Day ceremonies, and questioning about what was in it for them, the servicemen, I think the quote. And not wanting to go to the World War I cemetery because it was raining and he was worried about how it would look on his hair.

I mean, these are things that if one, they happened. Unquestionably, they happened. If the American public knew about it … there are things I think, again, when it comes to, at the end of day, it's like Kristi Noem (I don't want to swear) shooting her dog.

There are things that are so un-American that you're like, “How? No, you can't. She shot her dog. She shot her dog who was like one, barely out of a puppy.”

And there are things that you can't overcome, and I think Trump's comments and perception and belief about the military is one of those things, but the American public in general is unaware of it.

The average Trump voter, let alone the undecided voter isn't reading the Atlantic magazine. They're not seeing these statements that Trump has made. Again, to your point in large measure, because it's not …

If you got out there and you had out a united front of a simultaneous New York Times, Washington Post, and commercials on television being aired whenever during some sporting event finals of General Kelly, General Milley, General … I'm trying to think who the-

Ken Harbaugh:

Mattis.

Peter Strzok:

Mattis, and who is the fourth? McMaster. All there together saying, “Here's what he said in my presence. These are not the values that we, and the people we served with believe in. It is un-American.”

That would, in my opinion, shatter through a lot of the sort of like, no, I don't really care. It's not really that bad on the part of the American public. And I think there too, why they don't, and what it's going to take, I don't know.

I hope they come to understand when it's August, when it's September and when Trump is still right there in the race and with a shot at winning that they come around.

And I think part of it is a righteous duty of we want to keep the military out of politics, and we're general officers. But they kind of crossed that line when they became a chief of staff, and they became a national security advisor. In General Austin's case, became a Secretary of Defense.

So, the minute you like, I get it and there's extraordinary benefit. And again, speaking as a former army officer as well or in the military, but there is a huge value and extraordinary like day one in ROTC all the way through officer professional development, everything else, talking about the civilian military separation and the chain of command.

And you've got the civilian leadership, which is, I mean, again, like you, time and time and time again, I mean, that's just ingrained in the culture and that's a good thing because we don't want the military to have an outsized power in our political system.

At the same time, that is not a suicide pact to watch our democracy go down the tubes into authoritarianism. And so, I think there's a noble debate there. I mean, like I can see the arguments on both of the sides.

I also think they are at think tanks, they are on boards, they are on things that like why, whether they'll say this or not, watching the people who have spoken out suddenly who are subjected to threats of violence, who are not employable or have difficulty finding employment, whose families have all these risks attached.

It's not just a noble political, philosophical discussion. There's also, a personal one about (and this is not so noble) why do I want to expose myself and my family to all that? And I get that, I understand that, but I don't think that's a great good reason. And I do think that's there, whether they'd acknowledge that or not.

Ken Harbaugh:

Yeah. Well, we are running out of time. I do hope they're waiting for a certain moment. I think the debate is over though. When you have a candidate saying he would terminate the constitution, saying he would gut the civil service, eliminate all the woke generals, which is code for anyone who wouldn't do his bidding, even if it's unconstitutional.

I mean, he's already got lists of flag officers who are loyal to him that he would elevate to senior positions so that the guardrails that held them back in 2020 are no longer there. Said he would be dictator for a day, which nobody's a dictator for a day. Any student of history knows that.

I think the debate's over, I don't know what they're waiting for, but I hope it's something because if they remain silent through the election out of this, I would argue, false loyalty to the impartiality of the military, then I think that's a dereliction of duty.

But you said something I think which is critically important, which is that most Americans don't know what they know.

One of the occupational hazards of being a political podcaster, you probably experience it occasionally too, is that we assume everyone is swimming in the same set of facts. We hear all the time that General Kelly said that the former president called us losers for having served in uniform, our buddies who died, suckers, for having given their lives.

But I am still surprised when I get outside my bubble, how few Americans actually know that the former president said that, actually really understand how rotten to the core he is. And we have a few months left to get that message out.

Peter Strzok:

Yeah, and I think, again, in D-Day, we're taping on D-Day. When you look at American reaction to that, I mean, I've got my own personal reaction to that, but there is uniform strength of reaction and pride and patriotism about the military across America.

Red state, blue state, Midwest, wherever you go. It seems to me that that is one of those things that is Trump's Kristi Noem shooting the dog vulnerability, in my opinion, if we could get the word out about the way he …

Because it's a microcosm, he doesn't care about the military. He has never served in the military. Nobody in his family has served in the military. It is all about him.

It is a understandable way that you don't have to get into a lot of debate with somebody about just saying, “He said these things about the military, and it is so repulsive.”

Whoever you are, I think, and I'm with you, I hope the best way to do that is getting veterans, but particularly senior officers. I mean, yeah, you can have a compelling story as a staff sergeant, or an E4, or a captain, but having a series of flag officers who served with him directly speaking in unison would be extraordinarily powerful. And I hope they do, but I don't know if they will.

Ken Harbaugh:

A second Trump administration wouldn't just be a moral affront to all of us who honorably served. It would be devastating to national security. You called him quoting here, “A counterintelligence nightmare.”

And you would know, you were at one point the FBI's senior Russia guy. You tracked actual Russian moles in the US. You were part of … what was the name of the operation? I mean, this was your bag.

And the Republican party is about to nominate and we could well elect someone who is the greatest asset willing or not, that Vladimir Putin could ever want.

I guess first off, how does that make you feel as someone who spent years and risk your life tracking Russian agents in the US to see the Republican nominee as a Russian asset, willing or not? I want to caveat that.

Peter Strzok:

Right. Yeah. I mean, disgusted and really worried. And I think you make an important point. I have never thought that, or I think it extraordinarily unlikely that Donald Trump is some sort of like formal asset where he is working for the Russians and he knows it.

I think it's far more likely that he's easily manipulable coupled with the fact that he has this admiration for strong men.

But I mean, your listeners need to understand that. I mean, as a FBI agent working on national security, intel matters, certainly is something that like CI officers do, or Russian, or Chinese intelligence officers do.

They're trained to go out there and look at people and assess their vulnerabilities and figure out ways to get that person to do things for them. Typically provide information that they're not supposed to provide.

But there are formal processes and procedures and experts out there who just look at somebody and say, what are their vulnerabilities? Are they vulnerable to financial inducements? Do they have some addiction or habit that we can leverage to exploit? Do they have an ego need where they're susceptible to flattering being told that they're the greatest thing on earth?

And so, typically somebody will manifest, if you're lucky, you can find somebody who has something that you can sort of have a foothold to build a relationship and get them to work for you or coerce them to work for you.

But for Trump, it's like every single one of those things you look at, and he's got, yeah, financial self-interest and huge indebtedness. Now, within an additional $500 million up in New York. I mean, the one thing that drives Donald Trump beyond his ego is his money. So, there's clear financial vulnerability there.

Behaviors in the past that he might have done in Russia. I mean, there are how many women now who have accused him of sexual impropriety. The prospect that maybe not all of those are accurate. I have no reason to believe they're not all accurate.

But if you're a foreign intelligence service trying to get information about that, that you can use to leverage over somebody, that's a vulnerability.

If you look at his ego need and just his susceptibility to flattery and his admiration for authoritarians, I mean, time after time after time when you like formally from an intel perspective, look at somebody clinically and say, “What are their vulnerabilities that I can use to exploit to get them to do what I want them to do?” Trump is just flush with them.

And we see Putin playing him like a fiddle. He knows how to interact with him. And my reaction when he is standing next to Vladimir Putin and Helsinki and saying that he has no reason to disbelieve Putin and Putin's folks over the US intelligence community because even maybe a different setting, maybe I should call him the not so intelligent community.

I mean, he I think has no business being anywhere near the presidency. And as a counterintelligence professional, watching him, watching his behavior, watching his disclosures of classified information while he was president, his complete disrespect for the intelligence community and all the men and women in there.

And all the people around the world who put their lives in danger to work with the United States of America, the billions of dollars we spend on satellites and undersea systems and exquisite technologies, to have him just not care and put all those things at risk, it's appalling.

And it's not something you just easily get back. I mean, people die, systems get compromised. You can't just get a new one. That's not the way it works. Allies don't just suddenly having said, “Oh, I don't know that we can trust the United States based on the intel we shared with them.” You don't just suddenly get that trust back.

So, it casts a shadow into the future that I think we're still living with. And certainly, the prospect of his return to the presidency looms large, but certainly with all our allies and other nations around the world.

Ken Harbaugh:

Well, with our allies and in our own politics. I mean, he is bringing the Republican party with him on this weird fascination with authoritarianism. You just had Tommy Tuberville saying that Putin is the one who wants peace. You had the speaker of the House and the Republican party delaying for seven months aid to Ukraine to defend itself.

I just got back from Ukraine, and I asked a priest what that delay meant. And instead of telling me, he just held up his phone and started scrolling through the pictures of all the funerals he had to do for members of his parish who died waiting for American aid.

So, I think it's going to take us a long time to recover, even if Trump is defeated, given this weird affinity for Putin and authoritarianism. And the damage is incalculable.

Other than this authoritarianism fetish, is there another explanation for why Russia in particular is so elevated in the eyes of Republicans these days? They used to be enemy number one?

Peter Strzok:

Yeah, it's again, a great question. I think there are at least two reasons I can think of. One is that Trump is telling him to do it. And so, they're doing that.

And they're the two people I have the most running on this upcoming presidential election are Donald Trump because if he wins, he stays out of jail, and Vladimir Putin because if Donald Trump wins a to Ukraine gets shut down.

And the biggest threat to Vladimir Putin's not only his leadership, but his life is the success or failure of Ukraine. So, I would expect both of them to be very deeply engaged in the US political process towards Trump.

And there have been a series recently when the past couple of weeks, a broad European investigation by the Intel services about Russian funding targeting European members of Parliament to the tune of a million dollars a month at the high point or more.

And it was obviously centered around Brussels, where the Parliament sits. But I think it started out in either the Czech Republic. But it was a multi multinational investigation of what Russia was doing, playing in European politics.

What I would ask everybody listening to this to think about is if Russia is willing to spend … and that's what we know. This is the one particular set of investigations. There are routing money through a what was pretending to be a news distribution outlet to sympathetic members of the European Parliament.

If Russia is willing to spend a million dollars a month on that, who can possibly not imagine a scenario where Russia is spending much more than that in the US political system to advance their interests to stop or slow aid to Ukraine?

They're doing it in Europe, easily, million plus a month. How on earth are they not spending that or more in the US political environment, specifically in Congress to find people and reward people to slow roll or stop aid to Ukraine specifically, but in general to like all the Russian goals.

Disengagement from NATO, weakening of the Atlantic Alliance, reducing American leadership in the international fight for democracy, all of those Russian goals.

When you look at how some particularly far right members of Congress are voting, those voting records are too closely aligned, in my opinion, not to have a real concern about what are all the forces at play here?

And given that we know now, that Russia is spending that kind of money in the EU, God, they've got to be spending, my opinion, my guess, much more in the US political arena.

Ken Harbaugh:

I just got this news alert. I'm not saying it's directly connected to Russian disinfo targeted at far right members of Congress. But did you hear that Speaker Johnson just named Ronny Jackson, Republican from Texas, to the House Intel Committee.

As a counterintelligence guy, how does that sit with you?

Peter Strzok:

Yeah. Well, I mean too, and there was another … I'm trying to remember the guy who had his phone seized by the FBI for January 6th insurrection.

But look, Congressman Ronny Jackson commonly known, I guess his nickname was the Candyman when he was running the White House Medical Office, many people aware of this because he still advertises himself as an admiral, was demoted from admiral, I think, to captain by the Navy because of a series of complaints about his leadership style, because of his alleged substance abuse.

It was so egregious that DOD said, “You know what, we're going to reduce you in rank for this egregious behavior.” So, that person who is also, again, running around trumpeting everything that seems to be coming out of the Trump campaign's mouth is now, on the Intel committee.

And it is so, so irresponsible because these are voluntary appointments. This is something that Speaker of their House does. It is not mandated that any particular member gets selected to the Intel committees.

And historically, on both the House and the Senate side, the Intel committees were very serious. You had firebrands and they had people who were extremists, but you'd find committee assignments for them where they couldn't do a lot of damage and they could still make a lot of noise and everybody was happy.

You don't go putting people like this on the Intel committees. And it just goes to show that either again, Trump was pushing for this, the Freedom Caucus was pushing for this. I don't think Mike Johnson either has the understanding or the power to push back against it.

And so, as a result, I think two things are going to happen. One, the Intel Community already kind of scales back what they share with Congress. I mean, they understand that Congress isn't by sort of design, a leaky place.

So, you're going to have less sharing with Congress, which is going to lead to less effective oversight. And the intelligence community needs oversight. Not only oversight, they need funding, they need authorities, they need laws.

And when you break down that relationship, again, you're jeopardizing national security. So, congratulations, Mike Johnson, you've hurt national security yet again. But it's absurd. Ronny Jackson has no place going near Congress, let alone the House Intel committee.

Ken Harbaugh:

Well, he definitely couldn't get a no security clearance, much less TSSCI or the access he'll have as a member of the House Intel committee. It's outrageous.

Do you worry about violence between now and the election, or God forbid it's a close election and it's contested?

Peter Strzok:

I do. I think it's kind of a slow boil. I think it's going to get much more focused and the potential for violence greatly increase the closer we get to the election. I do think it'll be a close election.

And I think unfortunately, regardless of who wins, those folks, and again, particularly on the right, will see either the vindication and winning of their guys license to go engage in violence. Or the loss of their guy, proof of a rig system that they're going to fed up and now, going to take matters into their own hands. I'm particularly worried about post-election violence.

And I'm also, worried at some point, the far left is not … everybody's kind of the mainstream left is just in my opinion, being too dutiful of I don't trust the system. Well, you got to start making a little more noise and being a little more forceful. And I don't mean that in a violent way.

But I mean, there's a little too much acceptance I think of the status quo and like, well, let's just try the things we've always tried.

But I do worry that there are elements on the far left, like the extreme left, who are going to start … and again, I'm not talking to kind of a like scattered summer 2020 protests and violence at federal buildings and vandalism there. I'm talking about much more focused.

I worry that at some point there will be, on the opposite side, a response to violence that is going to put us in potentially a very, very bad place. Because then any moderates on both sides then get drawn into a pretty nasty potential conflict. But I'm very worried about violence especially as we get September, or October, November and on.

Ken Harbaugh:

Yeah, me too. Last question. We'll find the question in here at some point, but I guess I just want your reaction because I, just before we hopped on, read this New York Times review of the new Netflix documentary about Hitler and the Nazis, it's called Hitler and the Nazis.

And it was just, well, you'll see what I'm getting at. The review says, “We are shown Hitler playing to people who feel economically exploited and alienated from a liberal urban culture and uniting moderate and radical conservatives in fear of the far left.”

“We see him demanding absolute loyalty and pitting subordinates against one another in battles for his favor. We see an absence of empathy and an inability to admit defeat.” Does that sound familiar?

Peter Strzok:

Yeah, a hundred percent. And I think that there's a great book, and I forget the name of it, and I need to go look it up, talking about the kind of like the final year before Hitler took power.

And it wasn't only the Hitler's appeal to the people of Germany, it was also, his interaction with like the intelligentsia, the landed aristocracy, the owners of the economic power of Germany who said, “Oh, we can control this guy. Just let him be, just let him go do his own thing. He's good for us. He's not going to push anything too far. We need to support him because he's got our agenda.”

He could have gone to jail. And then was not, after the attempted push. But was given time and time again, “Oh, he won't ever be that bad. We can control it. He's never going to go too far.”

And so, both from a populist appeal to I think that's a disturbingly similar sort of like description of what we're facing here, but not only from a populist standpoint, but when you look at all the modern day robber barons, all these folks, Jamie Dimons, who are like, “Well, he'd be okay.”

And all these the venture capital folks out there who think that, well, he's really a better answer than Joe Biden is.

There are people out there who say he would be better for the economy. And I don't know what they're thinking. It is clear to me they believe that. I don't think he would be, and I think they're one personally, they've got more money than God and they're safe.

I mean, America could become a authoritarian hellscape and they've got money to go wherever they want around the world, but I don't think they appreciate either one, how horribly he could wreck the economy, or two, they view themselves as the oligarchs of the Trump authoritarian era, and maybe both.

Hey, I'm whoever now, in some VC firm, but I could be the next Oleg Deripaska or whoever it is. And have even more power, not have just money, but have instead of indirect political influence, direct political influence.

And so, I do worry about a number of things, but yeah, that's a scary … people have shied away from comparing Trump to Hitler. I think the parallels are too strong and we ought to just say that and talk about it because it is Hitler's a potentially, and especially egregious authoritarian.

But it is the path of authoritarians. And Hitler happens to be one, because Nazi Germany is one that we've all studied in school, but you could pick out countless others and people just don't know the story. But it's the same path, it's the same appeal. And it's exactly what Trump is doing.

Ken Harbaugh:

I don't know if it's the book you were referencing, but Franz von Papen wrote in the ‘50s about why Hitler was supported. He was a Nazi, but a fairweather Nazi. He was in it for the money. He was close to industrialists, he was a financier.

And even after the fall of Nazi Germany and the devastation Hitler wrought upon the country, there were these justifications. He was good for the economy. For the moneyed class, for the intelligentsia, as you put it, it came down to just their interests, money. And I'm afraid we're on that path right now.

Pete, thank you so much. Great talking to you. Let's have you back soon.

Peter Strzok:

Great to talk with you. And yeah, lots to talk about and let's keep everybody focused as we head into the homestretch here in November.

Ken Harbaugh:

Thanks for listening to Burn the Boats. If you have any feedback, please email the team at [email protected]. We're always looking to improve the show.

For updates and more, follow us on Twitter @Team_Harbaugh. And if you enjoyed this episode, don't forget to rate and review.

Burn the Boats is a production of Evergreen Podcasts. Our producer is Declan Rohrs, and Sean Rule-Hoffman is our audio engineer. Special thanks to Evergreen executive producers, Joan Andrews, Michael DeAloia, and David Moss.

I'm Ken Harbaugh, and this is Burn the Boats, a podcast about big decisions.