WASHINGTON — A week after FBI director Christopher Wray was deposed in a lawsuit over the firing of veteran agent Peter Strzok, the Justice Department is now asking a federal judge to -- once and for all -- block former President Donald Trump from being deposed in the suit.
"[T]he deposition of former President Trump is not appropriate," Justice Department attorneys wrote in a motion to fully quash a subpoena to Trump.
The lawsuit alleges that Strzok's firing"was the result of a long and public campaign by President Trump and his allies to vilify Strzok and pressure the agency to terminate him." The motion filed Wednesday is heavily redacted but suggests that is exactly what Wray said in his deposition last week.Other senior-level government officials who communicated with Trump have also provided sworn testimony in the case, including Trump's former chief of staff John Kelly, who said that Trump privately wondered whether Strzok and Page could be disciplined, but that he didn't recall Trump ever saying that to Wray or anyone else at the FBI.
Both lawsuits cite an array of tweets and public statements from Trump in the run-up to Page's resignation and Strzok's firing from the FBI. According to the Justice Department's motion, there is no sufficient reason to depose a former president in this case. The motion suggested no evidence indicates that the FBI fired Strzok at the direction of Trump -- even if that's what Trump wanted to happen -- and it claimed that"if Mr. Strzok wants to argue that former President Trump's public statements motivated the FBI to remove Mr. Strzok," then that evidence would have to come from FBI officials, not Trump.
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