The former FBI official Peter Strzok on how President Donald Trump is destroying U.S. counterintelligence from the inside.
On this episode of The David Frum Show, The Atlantic’s David Frum opens with a warning about President Donald Trump’s decision to shut down the conversation around the federal investigation into Jeffrey Epstein. Frum explains why Trump’s move has triggered backlash from parts of his own base and why it reveals a deeper political fracture inside the MAGA movement.
Then Frum is joined by the former FBI counterintelligence official Peter Strzok, who shares his insights on what’s happening at the bureau during Trump’s second term. Strzok, who is still engaged in a lawsuit with the government over his 2018 firing, explains how Trump loyalists such as the FBI’s director, Kash Patel, and its deputy director, Dan Bongino, are dismantling the agency’s national-security functions: purging experts, sidelining investigations, and leaving the United States dangerously vulnerable to terrorism, foreign espionage, and cyberattacks.
