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In particular, they argued that he was fired for using his protected political speech under the First Amendment and that the FBI also "deprived" him of his due process under the Fifth Amendment by denying him the right to appeal the decision.

The lawsuit also alleges that unlawful leaks to the press violated the Privacy Act.

"The concerted public campaign to disparage and, ultimately, fire Special Agent Strzok was enabled by the defendants' deliberate and unlawful disclosure to the media of texts, intended to be private, from an FBI systems of records, in violation of the Privacy Act," according to the court documents.

Uh, no. Strzok's (and Page's) iPhones were DOJ issue. That makes any information on them government property. The phones were to be used for conducting DOJ business, not setting up trysts or plots. However, the brass at the DOJ at the time did them a big favor:

Strzok, who was fired in August 2018, argued that his firing was politically motivated because a top FBI executive originally recommended a different, less extreme disciplinary response to his conduct.

FBI Assistant Director Candice Will, who led the Office of Professional Responsibility, initially recommended against firing the agent, instead proposing that he "be demoted and suspended for sixty days without pay," the court documents read.

"Will's decision was based upon the facts underlying the charges in the proposed removal, the agency's schedule of disciplinary offenses, the agency's record of discipline in comparable circumstances, and upon Strzok's long and outstanding record of service to the FBI and the country," the court documents argue, noting that it also reflected a "last chance agreement" that Strzok had accepted.

Nevertheless, Strzok was still fired, and because his firing was "effective immediately," he was prevented him from appealing the decision to the FBI's Disciplinary Review Board or any other formal avenue to receive due process.

"The discharge decision was made by Deputy Director David Bowdich, and was the result of unrelenting pressure from President Trump and his political allies in Congress and the media," the court filing states.

Strzok described that text during public testimony before Congress last year as "written late at night off the cuff and it was in response to a series of events that included then-candidate Trump insulting the immigrant family of a fallen war hero."

Horowitz ultimately said his investigative team found no evidence that any decision made during the course of the investigation was a result of political bias or improper influence. Nonetheless, the report found that those actions cast a cloud over the department and was deeply critical of FBI and Justice Department leadership.

Strzok served both as the No. 2 official on the FBI Clinton probe as well as briefly on special counsel Robert Mueller's investigative team. But Mueller promptly removed Strzok from his team after Horowitz's internal review uncovered the critical Trump text messages.

Revelations of the text messages sparked a barrage of attacks from Trump and Republicans, who have alleged that the top brass at the FBI and Justice Department harbored an anti-Trump bias during the 2016 election.

Moscow condemns Washington for imposing sanctions on Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif as it sees this as unprecedented pressure which should not be a part of modern international relations," Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Sergey Ryabkov said at a briefing.

The Treasury said on 31 July that all assets that Zarif might have in the United States would be blocked, threatening people and entities who engaged in transactions with the diplomat with penalties. Zarif denied having any property interests outside of Iran and voiced the belief that the United States had sanctioned him because of considering him a threat.

UK Defence Minister Ben Wallace has announced that London would join a US-led maritime mission in the Persian Gulf to add to maintaining security in the area. "We look forward to working alongside the US and others to find an international solution to the problems in the Strait of Hormuz", he told reporters in London on Monday.

Reuters has, meanwhile, quoted an unnamed British security source as saying that the US-led mission would concentrate on ensuring security in the Gulf and that the UK doesn't plan to join US sanctions against Iran.

Wallace's statement comes shortly after German Foreign Minister Heiko Maas reaffirmed his country's unwillingness to join a US-led maritime mission in the Strait of Hormuz. ... We want a European mission." At the same time, he added that the matter remains on the table but that convincing the EU to conduct such a mission will take time.

Vice Admiral Michael Gilday, Director of the Joint Staff, and nominee to become the Navy's top admiral, for his part, insisted that says the US should let its allies do most of the work of the "international maritime security framework" that Washington is trying to set up in the Gulf.

"The coalition that we're building in the Arabian Gulf and specifically in the Strait of Hormuz is going to be 80 or 90 percent a coalition effort and a much smaller US effort," Gilday told members of the Senate Armed Services Committee last week.