A federal judge has thrown out a former FBI agent's claims that he was illegally fired after sending disparaging text messages to a colleague about President Donald Trump.

Peter Strzok, a former top counterintelligence agent who played a crucial role in the investigation into Russian election interference in 2016, alleged in a federal lawsuit that the FBI caved to “unrelenting pressure” from Trump when it fired him and that he was unfairly punished for expressing his political opinions.

U.S. District Judge Amy Berman Jackson on Tuesday rejected Strzok's claim that his August 2018 firing violated his First Amendment free speech rights. The judge concluded that the FBI’s interest in avoiding the appearance of bias in an ongoing investigation outweighed Strzok's interest in expressing his o

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