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Former General Counsel: High-Ranking FBI Officials Plotted Hiring of Special Counsel - The Post & Email thepostemail.com/2019/04/15/for…
Baker admitted that a small group of FBI officials attempted to orchestrate the hiring of a special counsel in response to President Donald Trump’s firing of former FBI Director James Comey and discussed “investigations” it might open in addition to the Russia “collusion” probe.
According to Baker, who is under investigation for possibly leaking classified information to the media, Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein was involved in the discussions, as was reported prior to the release of the transcripts last week by Doug Collins (R-GA4).
Under questioning from counsel for the then-Democrat congressional minority by Susanne Sachsman Grooms Baker said that then-Deputy Director Andrew McCabe; his staff attorney, Lisa Page; he and several others perceived “a horrible atmosphere” after Trump fired Comey on May 9, 2017
“I am not sure that I can reduce it to one or two words,” Baker responded. “It was an, I guess, horrible atmosphere. It was shock, dismay, confusion, at least initially that night and then, then a sense of resolve that came pretty quickly as well to continue the FBI’s mission.”
When Grooms asked if the group suspected that Trump might have “obstructed the FBI’s investigation into the Russia matter?” Baker responded, “Yes.”
On Monday morning, Mollie Hemingway of The Federalist reported that “Obstruction of Justice” constitutes the second part of former Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s report on the Trump-Russia investigation, turned in to the Justice Department on March 22.
Hemingway, who appears to have seen the report, wrote: While the Mueller probe was sold to the American public using the Trump-Russia Collusion Conspiracy Theory, it was always actually about obstruction.
That was partly because FBI investigators knew at the time of the special counsel’s launch that — in the words of disgraced chief investigator Peter Strzok — “there’s no big there there” regarding collusion
When Comey leaked his memos to spur the launch of a special counsel, there was nothing meaningful about Russia collusion in them but he had written them so as to suggest that Trump’s frustration with FBI game-playing was really an attempt to obstruct law enforcement.
Baker claimed that in addition to McCabe and others in senior leadership the FBI, “The heads of the national security apparatus, the national security folks within the FBI, the people that were aware of the underlying investigation”shared the same concern.
“Was there discussion about opening a case into the obstruction of justice matter?” Grooms pressed, after which Baker consulted with the unnamed FBI counsel present in the room as to whether or not he could answer the question, after which Baker said, “Yes.”
On page 140, Baker responded in the affirmative to Grooms after she asked him if “…at some point you had a conversation with either Mr. McCabe or Lisa Page or maybe both about the idea of the Deputy Attorney General wearing a wire.”
Rosenstein and others at the Justice Department were having “long meetings” as to what actions they might take following Comey’s firing, with the implication that Rosenstein was unhappy that the letter he wrote recommending that Trump fire Comey was made public.
Rosenstein hired Mueller one day after Trump interviewed Mueller to possibly replace Comey. Thedirective Rosenstein gave Mueller in assuming the FBI’s counterintelligence investigation into the Trump campaign changed on August 2, 2017 in a memo which has not been fully released
Rosenstein is currently assisting Attorney General William Barr and Mueller to make what they believe are necessary reactions from Mueller’s report before releasing it to the public and Congress.
McCabe told CNN he believes it “is possible” that Trump is a “Russian asset.” Just over four weeks later, Mueller’s report cleared Trump and anyone in his campaign of having coordinated with Russians to win the election over Democrat Hillary Clinton.
Baker, who was demoted in January 2018 and resigned from the Bureau last May, is currently a lecturer at Harvard, private consultant, and contributing editor to the Lawfare blog.
