REPORT: DOJ Official Tied to Left-Wing Activism Approved $2 Million Settlement for Russiagate FBI Agents Strzok and Page
A former top Department of Justice official — now linked to prominent left-wing legal advocacy groups — approved a stunning $2 million payout to disgraced former FBI agents Peter Strzok and Lisa Page, whose anti-Trump messages became central to accusations of political bias in the FBI’s Trump-Russia investigation.
According to documents obtained through a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request by the Center to Advance Security in America, Brian Netter, then Deputy Assistant Attorney General under Attorney General Merrick Garland, greenlit the settlement agreements in 2024. The revelations were first reported by The Federalist.
Netter, who has since taken a role as Legal Director of Democracy Forward, a progressive legal nonprofit chaired by Clinton-aligned election lawyer Marc Elias, has long been affiliated with Democratic legal causes. Democracy Forward’s mission includes challenging GOP-backed election reforms and advocating for “social progress through litigation.”
The group’s website explicitly claims that individuals “responsible for January 6th have returned to power” — signaling its partisan orientation.
The settlement comes despite the controversial roles of Strzok and Page in the FBI’s Crossfire Hurricane investigation into the 2016 Trump campaign. Their leaked texts from 2015-2017, obtained from government-issued phones, included open disdain for then-candidate Trump and alarming references to an “insurance policy” in the event he were to win the presidency.
“I want to believe the path you threw out in [former FBI Deputy Director Andrew McCabe’s] office—that there’s no way he gets elected—but I’m afraid we can’t take that risk,” Strzok wrote to Page in one infamous 2016 exchange. “It’s like an insurance policy in the unlikely event you die before you’re 40.”
Republican lawmakers and watchdogs said the messages suggested the FBI was politicized at the highest levels — undermining its role as a neutral investigative agency.
Strzok, who was later fired by the FBI, and Page, who resigned, sued the DOJ, alleging their privacy was violated when their texts were leaked in 2017. The DOJ ultimately awarded $1.2 million to Strzok and $800,000 to Page, according to Politico.
Netter’s involvement adds a layer of political intrigue to the case. While at DOJ, he actively fought against Trump’s attempt to block the release of presidential records to the House January 6 Committee.
According to The New York Times, Garland officiated Netter’s wedding to Karen Dunn, a Democratic legal operative who later co-founded a firm with Jeannie Rhee — a former Clinton Foundation attorney and senior lawyer on Robert Mueller’s Russia probe.
Mueller’s final report found no evidence of collusion between the Trump campaign and Russia, though the investigation itself inflicted political damage and remained a dominant narrative throughout Trump’s presidency.
Adding to the controversy, newly released transcripts from the House Judiciary Committee show the FBI ignored intelligence suggesting that Hillary Clinton’s 2016 campaign planned to fabricate links between Trump and Russian operatives — information allegedly included in the Durham report’s annex.
Critics now say that the DOJ, under Garland, is not only protecting former operatives who pushed the discredited Russia narrative — but actively rewarding them using taxpayer dollars.
Photo credit: Gage Skidmore via Flickr
