Former FBI special agent Frank Montoya Jr., who served as the director of the Office of the National Counterintelligence Executive until 2016, acknowledged that Strzok “made a serious mistake” in exchanging those highly opinionated texts with Page. “But it wasn’t a fireable mistake,” he said. “Guys in the bureau get DUI’s and they get 30 days on the bricks. This is a case of the senior leadership in the bureau bending the knee and kissing the ring, while kowtowing to the wishes of the president.” If the decision was meant to appease Trump, it hasn’t worked—Trump continued to characterize the DOJ and FBI as “corrupt” into Thursday.

Montoya also questioned why there haven’t been similar calls to investigate the concerns expressed by various high-ranking Justice Department and FBI officials in the run-up to the election that employees in the FBI’s New York field office, who opposed Hillary Clinton, would leak new information about her emails to the press. These concerns were outlined in the Inspector General report, and confirmed by Strzok during his hearing. “I was aware of some people expressing that concern,” Strzok said. One of those people, he said, was Comey, who publicly reopened the Clinton email probe just days before the election, while keeping the counterintelligence investigation into the Trump campaign quiet.