Former FBI agent Peter Strzok is now claiming the anti-Trump text messages between himself and his lover, FBI lawyer Lisa Page, should be protected under the First Amendment, even though the texts were sent on FBI-issued phones.

The disgraced former FBI agent filed a lawsuit which challenges his dismissal and alleges the FBI and the Department of Justice violated his privacy and free speech rights.

Strzok’s legal team wrote in a new filing on Monday the Justice Department’s defense of Strzok’s termination “would subject thousands of mid-level managers in the federal government to punishment for expressing their opinions about candidates for national office in private water cooler conversations.”

The new filing was a response to the Department of Justice’s motion to dismiss Strzok’s lawsuit, where the DOJ informed the court about Strzok’s admission to conducting FBI business on his personal iMessage account. Strzok had assured them it was secure even though his wife accessed his text messages to discover he was having an extramarital affair with Page.

The DOJ included a letter to Strzok in their filing from the DOJ’s Office of Professional Responsibility (OPR) which stated Strzok had taken part in a “dereliction of supervisory responsibility” by not investigating the Clinton emails that turned up on Anthony Weiner’s unsecured laptop.

Former federal prosecutor Doug Burns gave his analysis of Strzok on Fox News.

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In a lawsuit filed by Lisa Page against the FBI and the Justice Department, she claimed the publicity from her private text messages caused “significant harm and financial loss” in the form of “permanent loss of earning capacity due to reputational damage.”