Disgraced former FBI agent Peter Strzok said Monday on MSNBC’s “Deadline” that Reps. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA) and Jim Jordan (R-OH) were inciting “incidents of violence” by “saying we should defund the FBI.”
Anchor Nicolle Wallace said, “How does the country’s law enforcement, New York City and beyond, protect against the animosity, the hatred and the rage? Let me just put one more piece of information out there for our viewers. This is from the Department of Homeland security’s Threat Assessment issued in November. ‘Perceptions of government overreach continue to drive individuals to attempt to commit violence targeting government officials and law enforcement officers. Some domestic violent extremists have expressed grievances based on perceptions that the government is overstepping its constitutional authorities or failing to perform its duties.’ I haven’t read all of Trump’s fund-raising appeals, but I’m sure they are very much in line with that existing grievance.”
Strzok said, “I think that’s absolutely right. New York City is excellent in terms of being able to, when there’s a specific event, to provide a robust, deep sort of protective shield around any potential illegal activity, let alone violent activity. I think when the problem comes in is, when you look at the post-Mar-a-Lago search. As was pointed out, there was an FBI field office in the Midwest that was attacked. Nobody attacked the FBI field office in Miami or the FBI field office in Tampa, and much like New York City can do an extraordinary job locking down and securing the courthouse and the district attorney’s office. That isn’t going to stop somebody in Omaha, Nebraska or up in New Hampshire or El Paso, Texas, who decides that there’s a horrible, just miscarriage of justice by the federal government, particularly when you have people like Marjorie Taylor Greene and Jim Jordan saying we should defund the FBI.”
He added, “So, how do you predict somebody who probably may not have all their sanity to begin with, suddenly deciding that they’ve had enough, with no link whatsoever to Trump, to New York City, to Mar-a-Lago, suddenly deciding that they need to lash out at the government? That’s a really difficult thing to do. And unfortunately, I think we are going to see incidents of violence because I see nothing from the Republican Party leadership doing anything to tamp down the sort of aggrievement with local, state and national law enforcement.”
Follow Pam Key On Twitter @pamkeyNEN