Noah Feldman, Columnist

Don’t Cry for Peter Strzok. Worry About the FBI.

The agent’s firing helps President Trump in his efforts to discredit the Justice Department.

August 13, 2018 at 7:30 PM UTC

Noah Feldman is a Bloomberg Opinion columnist. A professor of law at Harvard University, he is author, most recently, of “To Be a Jew Today: A New Guide to God, Israel, and the Jewish People."

Guilty of bad judgment.
Photographer: Andrew Harrer/Bloomberg

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There’s no need to shed tears for Peter Strzok, the senior FBI agent who was fired Friday by the bureau’s deputy director, David Bowdich. Strzok’s anti-Donald Trump texts, sent while he was taking part in the Hillary Clinton email investigation, harmed the bureau’s appearance of impartiality.

But the firing of Strzok, after an internal investigation recommended only reprimand and demotion, is wrong anyway, and for a related reason. The firing further unravels the line between partisan politics and the Federal Bureau of Investigation’s proper role as a nonpartisan criminal justice investigative arm.