Joseph Moreno is a former federal national security prosecutor with the U.S. Department of Justice and a former staff member to the FBI 9/11 Review Commission. He is now a white collar litigation partner at Cadwalader Wickersham & Taft.
By Joseph Moreno
The Hill
The House committees opted to haul (Peter) Strzok before them for multiple days to repeatedly revisit the issue of his alleged bias against President Trump. Instead of applying a careful investigative approach, Republicans in the majority seemed primarily intent on using the Strzok hearing to cast doubt on the FBI and the Mueller investigation. The minority Democrats, understandably frustrated, did themselves few favors by veering too far in the opposite direction by heaping praise on Strzok. They likely would have been more effective had they simply issued a statement condemning the hearing and walked out.
These are serious times that call for serious oversight. The House committees had a prime opportunity to conduct a real hearing, sort out true issues versus distractions, and focus on restoring confidence in the FBI and another serious investigation, which is that of the special counsel into Russian meddling with our American election system.
We know the Russian government conducted active measures to interfere in the 2016 election. The intelligence community, the House, and the Senate have all confirmed this. We know that Mueller has conducted a professional investigation that has borne more fruit with indictments of Russian intelligence officers for hacking networks and email accounts related to the Democratic Party. We know the special counsel team has secured guilty pleas relating to multiple individuals associated with the Trump campaign for lying about their interactions with Russians.
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