DONALD REALLY NEEDS TO FIRE THEM ALL...:

Former FBI agents who spoke to Business Insider this week characterized the outcry as "nonsense" aimed at discrediting an investigation that has dogged Trump and the GOP more broadly for over a year.

Frank Montoya, Jr., a former FBI special agent who served as the Director of the Office of the National Counterintelligence Executive, was blunt.

"There is a lot of anger in the FBI (the entire intelligence community, for that matter) over how this president will say nary a negative word about the Russians, but will insult us every chance he gets," he said. [...]

Former FBI agents who knew and worked with Strzok acknowledged that he should have been more circumspect with his comments, even if they were private, given the highly politicized nature of both the Clinton and Russia probes. But they broadly characterized him as a professional who never expressed his political opinions when conducting an investigation.

Montoya, who served in the bureau for over two decades, called Strzok "an exceptional agent" and "rising star" whose removal from Mueller's probe was "a g reat loss to the investigation."

"Moscow was happy, I'm sure when that happened," he said.

"There's a lot of partisan political white noise out there about Pete's supposed 'bias,'" Montoya said. "It's all nonsense. I've known Pete for a long time. I didn't know what his political opinions were. Never asked. Never cared. That's the way it was for the vast majority of us."

Another veteran FBI counterintelligence agent who knew Strzok but requested anonymity to discuss internal DOJ decisions called him an "expert" in counterintelligence work who "rose to the level of Deputy Assistant Director in the usual way: by being a reliable, consistent, and capable member of the executive team."

The nature of FBI investigations makes it impossible for one employee to exert outsized influence over others, former agents emphasized.

"There's been a lot of accusation lately in the public arena about how Pete's supposed biases may have affected outcome of the email investigation and predication for Russia investigation," Montoya said. "More nonsense."

"Pete wasn't the only guy working on those cases," he added. "His was one voice, albeit an important one, but there were other important voices in the mix, too."

With regard to the email investigation, Montoya said, "p rofessional, experienced prosecutors and senior leadership (above Pete) in the FBI played the key roles in the final decision not to prosecute Clinton.

Pete may have helped draft the public messaging at the conclusion of the case, but he didn't act alone. I participated in quite a few of these matters myself and the planning process was always a group effort."

Former FBI unit chief Mark Rossini, who spent 17 years at the bureau, largely agreed.

"It would be literally impossible for one human being to have the power to change or manipulate evidence or intelligence according to their own political preferences," he said.

" FBI agents, like anyone else, are human beings. We are allowed to have our political beliefs. If anything, the overwhelming majority of agents are conservative Republicans," he added.

Former FBI counterintelligence agent Asha Rangappa made a similar point in an interview earlier this week.

"The FBI investigators who are working on any given day will probably be mostly politically conservative," Rangappa said, drawing from her interactions with agents under President George W. Bush. That is one reason, she said, why Republicans should "think carefully" about the precedent they're setting in pointing to agents' political leanings as evidence of a tainted investigation.

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