Legal, but not ethical

Watching the Strzok hearings, something is becoming very clear: Strzok is using legal technicalities to put up a defense for his actions. Those legal technicalities are meant to generate "reasonable doubt" whether his actions were based on bias or not. He indicates that his texts contained "political speech" and they are hence protected under the First Amendment.

In fact, he's correct. His political speech is protected and he cannot be fired or otherwise discipllined based on his political speech. If this was a situation where pure legalities were being used to make a determination of legal responsibility, he'd be able to make a case for "not guilty".

However, he's not writing a computer program where a mathematical test is either true or false. Nor is he taking a test where his answers will be graded solely on their correctness.

He's testifying in front of Congress, where human beings are assessing the totality of his testimony against the totality of a situation that involves both him, his girlfriend, multiple others in the FBI, non-business texts, extremely powerful political figures, and a record of involvement in multiple investigations.

If this was a stand-alone situation and he was the only one involved, his defense would fly.

But in front of Congress, he's displaying arrogance, "holier-than-thou", and acting as someone who thinks most of the elected Congressional representatives are complete idiots. (Whether they are, or not, isn't the point.) He's forgotten something rather important: you never directly insult those who will be making decisions that will affect you for the rest of your life.

Human beings are involved here. He's pissing off (by pissing on) the members of the committee. His body language and his anger at some questions is proving that he may be incapable of separating his emotional feelings from his job assignment. The transcript won't indicate this anger, but the video does indicate his anger - and the video testimony will permanently damage his reputation for fairness.  He's proving that he may understand the legal issues involved, he doesn't understand or recognize the ethical violations he has committed.

And if he can't demonstrate the ability to act in an ethical manner in front of the Congressional committee, then he's giving strength to the argument that he did not act in an ethical manner in the past.

He's claiming his anger is based on his "passion" to defend the Constitution -- but his anger only rises up when he's being asked about the texts that seemingly reveal significant bias against Trump and toward Clinton, or when he's asked to explain his behavior with regard to the investigations he was involved in, or when he's asked some very direct questions that would require some very embarrassing answers.

Strzok's legal defense holds.  His defense of his conduct as "ethical", fails miserably.

His attempts to build "context" around the texts is a complete failure, demonstrated by his multiple explanations to their meaning and, in one case, saying that he doesn't remember the text but he remembers being angry when he sent it.

The more he talks, the less believable he becomes.

There's a concept in politics: "When you're explaining, you're losing." Strzok's explanations ring false.  There's a simple reason why:

His behavior was legal, but it was not ethical.  The IG said so.  Case closed.

Moreover, Strzok was working on some counter-intelligence operations as part of his job. He was married and had a girl friend (Page). These facts would have made him a target for a foreign intelligence agency: he was already violating his oath to his wife and making himself possibly subject to blackmail and worse, and he had access to information that a foreign intelligence agency could use.

In every security briefing I've ever received, we are told to watch for - and report - behaviors by other employees that could be used to coerce them into actions that could threaten national security. Strzok is exactly the kind of person that we are told to watch for.  The report is made anonymously. The investigating agencies do their work in total secrecy. If there is nothing to it, nothing is done and the report is filed as "no action necessary".

BUT if an action is required, the individual is interviewed by someone higher in the chain than the FSO (facility security officer) - and that interview is also done in complete secrecy.

Then, if an action needs to be taken, the appropriate action is taken.

These investigations happen fairly often.  The reason you never hear about them is that you should never hear about them.  And until there is something to reveal, you don't know about them.

Strzok was married and had a girlfriend. Unless they were a willing threesome - and even if they were - this was a situation that could have been used to put Strzok (and Page) into an embarrassing situation and thus push them toward complying with demands made by a foreign power.

Strzok thinks he's smarter than anyone who he works for. He's arrogant, and believes that he is serving a higher purpose.  We're lucky that he wasn't working directly with the Russians.

Like Robert Hanssen did.