Trump deposition postponed in FBI lawsuit
Rachel Schilke
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Justice Department prosecutors were granted a postponement of the deposition of former President Donald Trump in a four-year-old civil lawsuit filed by former FBI officials on Friday.
Judge Amy Berman Jackson ruled in favor of the Justice Department’s request to depose FBI Director Christopher Wray before Trump is questioned in the case filed by former FBI counterintelligence official Peter Strzok and former FBI attorney Lisa Page.
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Strzok and Page sued the Justice Department in 2016 after they were fired during the FBI’s investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 presidential election, which Trump won. During the investigation, text messages revealed anti-Trump sentiments.
In a rare moment of solidarity, the Biden administration is going to bat for Trump, releasing the termination letter the FBI sent Strzok. Earlier this year, Jackson ruled that Strzok had a right to interview Trump. However, Justice Department prosecutors asked Jackson on Thursday to postpone the former president’s deposition, which was scheduled for May 24, to hold a meeting with Wray first.
Prosecutors argued that deposing Trump before Wray violated the standing precedent that federal officials are questioned in order of seniority, per CBS News.
“Contrary to the request of the United States, Mr. Strzok seeks to depose former President Trump before Director Wray,” prosecutors wrote Thursday, “thereby making it impossible to determine if the Director’s deposition might obviate the need to depose the former President.”
Prosecutors told Jackson they intended to fight this to the appeals court if she did not agree.
“[The government] may recall that it was the Court’s view that it was Director Wray, the only current high-ranking public official in the group of proposed deponents, whose ongoing essential duties fell most squarely under the protection of the doctrine in question,” Jackson wrote in her ruling on Friday evening.
“However, in order to get the parties — who apparently still cannot agree on anything — over this impasse, it is hereby ORDERED that the deposition of Christopher Wray proceed first, rendering the instant motion moot,” she continued.
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The White House said earlier this year that it would not assert executive privilege in the case to keep Strzok and Page from deposing Trump, and Trump himself did not request executive privilege be invoked, according to federal prosecutors.
Strzok claims the FBI unjustly fired him for political reasons and seeks reinstatement into the agency. Page argues in her lawsuit that the text messages that caused their termination were unlawfully released and violated her privacy rights, leading to “frequent attacks by the President of the United States, as well as his allies and supporters.”