After Peter Strzok, a high-ranking FBI official who became the center of a firestorm over private text messages that he sent to a girlfriend that were critical of Donald Trump, was fired on Friday as the Inquisitr reported, a “parody” account opened on Twitter that despite being clearly marked as a “parody” fooled numerous Twitter users into believing the real Strzok was using the account to post new attacks on Trump.
Twitter has since suspended the fake Strzok account, but not before it posted such anti-Trump messages as “I have been fired for expressing my personal opinion in private texts about a dictator that history will soon deem not only a Russian asset but an unhinged madman threatening the sovereignty of the United States of America,” according to Business Insider .
The account completely fooled Fox News online columnist and former FBI official Chris Swecker, who wrote in a column quoted by the political site Think Progress , “Strzok is now engaged in an unhinged Twitter rant of vitriol towards President Trump that matches the hatred he expressed for Trump in his texts with Page. He has even revealed new and possibly classified or confidential investigative detail – or simply told lies – on Twitter.”
The passage quoted from the fake Strzok account has since been removed from the online Fox News column, with no notice that the text of the column has been edited or altered.
Not long after the column quoting the fake account went online, Trump cited it in a Twitter posting in which he once again attacked the FBI. Since he fired FBI Director James Comey on May 9 of 2017, Trump has posted 125 Twitter messages in which he attacks and criticizes the FBI, according to the Trump Twitter Archive .
Trump quoted Swecker’s column in a Twitter post on Wednesday, saying, “‘The action (the Strzok firing) was a decisive step in the right direction in correcting the wrongs committed by what has been described as Comey’s skinny inner circle.’ Chris Swecker, former FBI Assistant Director.”
Chris Geidner, a national security reporter for BuzzFeed News , noted that Trump failed to spot the fake Strzok reference in his own eagerness to attack the FBI.
Donald Trump just quoted from a Fox News opinion column by Chris Swecker that references tweets sent by fake Peter Strzok accounts on Twitter. Good job, everyone, all around. pic.twitter.com/7jxgLp6UhH
— Chris “Subscribe to Law Dork!” Geidner (@chrisgeidner) August 15, 2018
Trump posted only two Twitter messages on Wednesday, both attacking the FBI. His second post read, “‘Hillary Clinton clearly got a pass by the FBI. We have the unfortunate situation where they then decided they were going to frame Donald Trump’ concerning the Rigged Witch Hunt. JOE DIGENOVA, former U.S. Attorney.”
The real Peter Strzok recently opened a Twitter account and has posted only two times as of Wednesday afternoon. Neither message mentions Trump, but in one message, Strzok said he was “deeply saddened” by the decision to fire him, but also that it was “an honor to serve my country and work with the fine men and women of the FBI.”
