Peter Strzok showed his 'oversized' self-importance in Senate testimony, Doug Collins says

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Rep. Collins: Strzok believed he was untouchable

New transcripts reveal Peter Strzok's actions leading up to 2016 election; Judiciary Committee ranking member Rep. Doug Collins reacts.

Former FBI Special Agent Peter Strzok believed he was "untouchable" before he was demoted from Special Counsel Robert Mueller's Russia investigation in 2017, the top Republican on the House Judiciary Committee told Fox News on Thursday night.

Strzok testified before the committee behind closed doors in June 2018, but the transcript was not released until Thursday at the impetus of Rep. Doug Collins, R-Ga.

"The most alarming part of Peter Strzok’s testimony is, he seemed to believe he and he alone could do whatever he wanted to do and that his own bias and his own indiscretions with Lisa Page and anything else – nothing mattered except what he believed: that he was untouchable," Collins told Ed Henry on "The Story." " ... Here's someone at the Department of Justice, the FBI, who says 'I believe that I can solve the world's problems politically.'"

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Strzok, a onetime senior counterintelligence agent, was fired from the FBI this past August after months of scrutiny regarding anti-Trump text messages between himself and FBI lawyer Lisa Page, with whom he was carrying on an extramarital affair. In one now-infamous text message sent in August 2016, Strzok told Page: "I want to believe the path you threw out in [then-FBI Deputy Director] Andy’s [McCabe's] office — that there’s no way [Trump] gets elected — but I’m afraid we can’t take the risk. It’s like an insurance policy in the unlikely event you die before you’re 40."

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Collins told Fox News on Thursday that Strzok, Page and McCabe were part of a "corrupt triumvirate."

"They were the insurance policy," said Collins, referencing the now-infamous text message from Strzok to Page. "They believed [in] themselves to protect the country from a president they didn't like and from a man they didn't like."

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Collins also discussed Strzok's disclosure that Hillary Clinton's attorneys struck a deal with the Justice Department that denied investigators access to Clinton Foundation emails found on the former secretary of state's private email server.

"When we understand that Hillary Clinton was treated differently, it started, frankly, with President Obama’s Department of Justice," Collins said. "We are now seeing insight through Lisa Page’s testimony, through Peter Strzok’s discussion of this, that it was the Department of Justice basically saying, ‘there’s no way Hillary Clinton is going to be charged here, because we’re not going to use the standard of intent.’ The intent is not a part of gross negligence here ... This just shows you there's a two-tier system here."

Fox News' Ed Henry contributed to this report.