Michael: The 2016 election was decided by about 77,000 votes across three states—enough people to fit in one football stadium. Kevin: Wow, that’s an incredibly thin margin. Michael: It is. Now, what if I told you the FBI, in the very act of trying to protect that election from foreign interference, may have been the institution that tipped the scales? Kevin: That’s a heavy accusation. It sounds like a constitutional nightmare. Michael: It’s the explosive dilemma at the heart of Compromised: Counterintelligence and the Threat of Donald J. Trump by Peter Strzok. Kevin: And Strzok isn't just some pundit. This is a guy who spent over two decades in the FBI, a top counterintelligence agent who literally wrote the book on hunting Russian spies before he was tasked with investigating Russian interference in the election. Michael: Exactly. He led the famous “Operation Ghost Stories,” which dismantled a network of Russian sleeper agents living in American suburbs. But he was also famously fired after his private text messages critical of Trump were made public, making him one of the most controversial figures in this whole saga. The book is his side of the story, and it's a chilling one. Kevin: So you have a decorated spy hunter at the center of a political firestorm. Where does he even begin to tell that story?

Michael: He starts by taking us deep into his world. To understand how he saw the events of 2016, you first have to understand the threats he was trained to see. He drops us right into it with a case called 'Ghost Stories.' Kevin: Ghost Stories. Sounds spooky. What was it? Michael: It was a decade-long investigation into a network of Russian 'illegals'—deep-cover intelligence officers posing as ordinary American and Canadian citizens. Think of the TV show The Americans, but real. Strzok tells this incredible story of a covert operation in 2001. His team had to break into a bank in Cambridge, Massachusetts, after hours. Kevin: Wait, they actually broke into a bank? How is that legal? Michael: Through a FISA warrant—the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act. It’s a secret court order that allows the government to conduct surveillance on foreign agents. So, Strzok's team, dressed in plain clothes, gets the bank manager to disable the alarms, and they bring in a locksmith to drill into a safety deposit box belonging to a couple they suspect are spies. Kevin: The tension must have been off the charts. What did they find? Michael: At first, not much. Some cash, a birth certificate. But then they found a stack of 35mm photo negatives. They photographed everything, put it all back perfectly, and left without a trace. Back at the lab, they're developing the film and one of the agents notices something on the edge of the negative strip. The word 'TACMA' is printed there. Kevin: TACMA? What's that? Michael: They had no idea. But then someone realized 'TACMA' in the Cyrillic alphabet is 'TASMA'—a well-known Russian film company. That tiny detail was the first piece of hard evidence linking this ordinary-seeming couple in Cambridge directly to Russia. It was the thread that helped unravel the whole network. Kevin: That is incredible. A whole spy ring exposed because of the brand of camera film. So what's the point of these 'illegals'? What were they even trying to do? Michael: That’s the key question. Strzok says they have two main purposes. First, they're a backup communication system if the official embassy spies get kicked out. But more importantly, their job is to build relationships, to get close to people in power or people who will be in power, and to identify their vulnerabilities. Kevin: This sounds like Cold War stuff. Was this really still happening in the 2000s? Michael: Strzok’s point is that it never stopped. And the goal is to find leverage. This brings us to a critical concept he introduces: kompromat. Kevin: Hold on, you said 'kompromat.' It sounds like something from a spy movie. What does that actually mean in the real world? Michael: It’s a Russian term for 'compromising material.' It can be anything—financial debt, a secret affair, hidden business dealings, even just a deeply shameful secret. It's any information that can be used to blackmail or influence someone. For a counterintelligence officer like Strzok, their entire job is to find these spies and to protect Americans from being targeted with kompromat. Kevin: Okay, so kompromat is the weapon. And Strzok's job is to spot who's vulnerable. That brings us to the political nightmare of 2016. He's not just looking at spies in Cambridge anymore; he's looking at presidential candidates.

Michael: Exactly. And his world completely collides with American politics. The book details how the FBI was simultaneously running two of the most politically sensitive investigations in its history. On one side, you have 'Midyear Exam'—the investigation into Hillary Clinton's use of a private email server. Kevin: The case that dominated the news for over a year. Michael: Right. And Strzok describes it as incredibly frustrating. He says it was more of an administrative issue that ballooned into a political crisis. He even quotes one of his top agents who said, "It’s a shame we can’t have a team like this on a bona fide espionage case." They felt they were wasting immense resources on something that, while careless, didn't have criminal intent. Kevin: But at the same time, something else was brewing, wasn't it? Michael: At the exact same time. In July 2016, the FBI gets a tip from a trusted foreign ally, Australia. A Trump campaign advisor named George Papadopoulos had been boasting in a London bar that he knew the Russians had "dirt" on Hillary Clinton in the form of thousands of emails and had offered to help the Trump campaign by releasing it. Kevin: Whoa. So this wasn't a rumor, this was a tip from an allied government. Michael: A very credible one. And for Strzok's team, this was a five-alarm fire. It wasn't just hacking anymore. This was an offer of coordination between a hostile foreign power and a U.S. presidential campaign. So, the FBI opens a new investigation, codenamed 'Crossfire Hurricane.' Kevin: How did they even start investigating the Trump campaign? What was the trigger? Michael: That tip was the trigger. They had to figure out if the campaign was wittingly or unwittingly colluding with Russia. And this is where Strzok pushes back hard against the public narrative. Kevin: You mean the 'witch hunt' narrative? The idea that the whole thing was a setup started by the Steele dossier? Michael: Precisely. Strzok is adamant, and the later Inspector General's report confirms this, that the Crossfire Hurricane investigation was opened on July 31, 2016. The FBI didn't even receive the Steele dossier until months later. The investigation was prompted by the Papadopoulos information, not the dossier. Kevin: That’s a crucial distinction that seems to get lost in the noise. So the FBI is in this impossible position: a public, politically explosive investigation into one candidate, and a secret, terrifying national security investigation into the other. Michael: An absolute minefield. And Strzok describes the immense pressure to keep the Russia investigation under wraps. A leak could be seen as the FBI interfering in the election, but not investigating was a dereliction of duty. Kevin: And then, in the middle of all this, the Weiner laptop happens. Michael: The October surprise. They discover hundreds of thousands of emails potentially related to the Clinton case on a laptop belonging to Anthony Weiner, the husband of Clinton's top aide, Huma Abedin. Director Comey feels he has to notify Congress, just 11 days before the election. Strzok calls this the 'original sin.' Once Comey had publicly commented on the Clinton case in July, he felt he was locked into providing updates, no matter how damaging the timing. Kevin: And that decision may very well have changed the outcome of the election. Michael: Strzok believes it did. He argues that the combination of Russia's interference and the FBI's announcement created the perfect storm that led to Trump's victory.

Michael: And that leads to the book's ultimate, terrifying conclusion. After months of investigation, after Trump is elected, the threat doesn't go away. It moves into the Oval Office. Kevin: This is the core of the book's title, right? The idea that Trump was 'compromised.' What does Strzok actually mean by that? Michael: It's the central argument of the book. Being 'compromised' isn't necessarily about being a card-carrying secret agent who takes orders from Moscow. From a counterintelligence perspective, it means you are vulnerable to foreign influence or coercion because of your secrets, your debts, or your behavior. Kevin: So it's about leverage. The kompromat we talked about earlier. Michael: Exactly. Strzok lays out a pattern of behavior that, to him, screamed vulnerability. Trump's repeated, provable lies about his business dealings in Russia, like the Trump Tower Moscow project. His public call for Russia to hack Clinton's emails. His praise of Putin. And then, after the election, his National Security Advisor, Michael Flynn, secretly talking to the Russian ambassador about sanctions and then lying about it to the Vice President and the FBI. Kevin: So is Strzok saying Trump is a Russian agent? Michael: He's careful not to say that. He says the FBI had to investigate whether he was. After Trump fired James Comey, Strzok describes the moment the FBI leadership made the decision to open a counterintelligence investigation into the President of the United States himself. They had to ask: Is the president acting under the influence of a foreign power? Kevin: That's a breathtaking question to even have to ask. Michael: It's unprecedented. And Strzok points to a key event: the day after firing Comey, Trump hosts the Russian Foreign Minister and Ambassador in the Oval Office. According to reports, he tells them, "I just fired the head of the FBI. He was crazy, a real nut job... I faced great pressure because of Russia. That’s taken off." Kevin: He said that to the Russians? It’s like he’s admitting he fired Comey to end the Russia investigation. Michael: From a counterintelligence perspective, it's a confession. Strzok argues that Trump's actions consistently aligned with Russian interests while damaging American ones. His lies about his connections to Russia created a massive vulnerability, a form of kompromat that Russia could exploit. Whether they did or not, the vulnerability itself was the national security threat. That is the definition of being compromised.

Michael: Ultimately, Strzok's book is a warning. The threat isn't just one person; it's the vulnerability of our entire system when a leader's personal interests and a foreign adversary's goals align. It forces institutions like the FBI into these impossible, no-win positions. Kevin: It’s a story with no clean heroes or villains, just incredibly high stakes and flawed people making decisions under immense pressure. The book is highly rated by readers who see it as a courageous insider account, but it's also, unsurprisingly, been attacked as a partisan hit job by critics. Strzok himself remains a deeply polarizing figure. Michael: He does. But he argues that his actions, and the FBI's, were driven not by political bias, but by a duty to the Constitution. He saw a threat, and his job was to investigate it, no matter how high up it went. Kevin: It leaves you wondering, doesn't it? How do you protect a country when the very person at the top displays all the red flags your training has taught you to look for? It's a question that goes way beyond politics. Michael: It's a heavy topic, and we know it's polarizing. We'd love to hear your thoughts. What does it mean for a leader to be 'compromised' in the modern age? Find us on our socials and let us know. Kevin: This is Aibrary, signing off.