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There are two kinds of villains in TV mystery shows. The plausibly sympathetic type and the smirking creep.
Peter Strzok had rehearsed all the lines of the plausibly sympathetic type. The character that James Comey is trying to play. A man so upright that he combs his hair every hour. But Strzok couldn't help that smirk. Every time he clashed with the impotent House Republicans barraging him with questions that he dodged or refused to answer, the smirk crept over his face and into his voice.
And what was meant to be one character became another character.
Public testimony of this kind is a performance. But Strzok couldn't helping letter his inner self, the one we got to know from his texts, slip through. Both slimy and self-righteous, he came out of the closet in moments like this exchange with Louie Gohmert that quickly went viral.