Sen. Chuck Grassley wants to know if a Defense Department official had any involvement in leaking information about Lt. Gen. Michael Flynn to the news media.
The Iowa Republican on Thursday sent a follow-up letter to the Department of Defense’s Office of Net Assessment Thursday asking about the actions of James Baker, its director since early 2015. The ONA is the Pentagon’s internal think tank, gaming out military and other geopolitical scenarios decades into the future.
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Last month, a Defense Department official denied allegations that Baker leaked classified information to Washington Post columnist David Ignatius related to Flynn’s conversations with then Russian diplomat Sergey Kislyak during the 2016-17 transition period before President Trump took office.
Flynn’s attorney, Sidney Powell, responding to a November court filing, said Baker is “believed” to be behind the leaks that are part of the focus of the Russia investigation spearheaded by U.S. Attorney John Durham.
“The reference by the defense team for Mr. Flynn was a note in their court filing. At no time since that filing has anyone within the DoD or the DOJ investigated Mr. Baker, nor given any credence to this ‘belief,’” a Defense Department official told the Washington Examiner.
However, documents revealed through Freedom of Information Act requests by Judicial Watch show Baker regularly conversed with Ignatius, whose Jan. 12, 2017, column first detailed Flynn’s phone calls with Kislyak during the presidential transition. A follow-up article was written by the Washington Post on Feb. 9, 2017.
Grassley writes to Baker in his June 18 letter: “Included in these 143 pages of email communications are several heavily redacted communications between you and Deputy Secretary of Defense Robert Work and Deputy Director of ONA, David Epstein, which would presumably be about Ignatius given the subject matter of the Judicial Watch Freedom of Information Act request.”
He continues, “Given the overlap in time between the majority of the emails and the leak of the call, your apparent close relationship with Mr. Ignatius, and your communications with Mr. Work and Mr. Epstein, please provide all 143 pages of email communications in unredacted form and all email communications among and between you, Mr. Work, Mr. Epstein, and Mr. Ignatius from July 1, 2016, to March 1, 2017, no later than July 2, 2020.”
Grassley asks, among other questions of Baker, “Did you provide any information relating to any Flynn-Kislyak call to the media? If so, what information?”
The Washington Examiner previously reported that a congressional source said that the information about the Flynn-Kislyak phone calls were passed through from a U.S. Intelligence Community briefing hosted by Deputy Secretary of Defense Robert Work.
“Bob Work, who was the deputy secretary, had an IC briefing, whereupon he heard all this crap about Flynn … but he did have an IC meeting, and then went down to Baker, and then Baker put it out. In other words, Baker was Bob Work’s cutout guy,” the source said.
Work denied he had any involvement with the leaking of the Flynn/Kislyak calls, telling the Washington Examiner, “I had absolutely no involvement with relaying info to the media or public about the Flynn/Kislyak calls. As deputy secretary of defense, I didn’t deal with General Flynn, either during the transition or after. I met him once at Dover for a dignified transfer of a fallen SEAL.”
He added, “Moreover, I had zero insight into his schedule or activities. I had no knowledge of the calls, nor would I have any reason to. And I certainly didn’t relay any information about Flynn to the press.”
Grassley, in his letter, however, asks Baker if during his conversations with Work whether he ever discussed any information about Flynn.
Baker is also asked by Grassley if he provided any information related to any Flynn-Kislyak call to anyone with the knowledge that it would be shared by that person to the media, and if during his communications with Ignatius if he ever gave the Washington Post columnist any information related to Flynn.
Additionally, Powell’s court filing on Nov. 1 discusses Baker as a “handler” of Stefan Halper, a Cambridge professor and an FBI informant who made contact with members of the Trump campaign.
“[Halper] was paid exorbitant sums by the FBI/CIA/DOD through the Department of Defense Department’s Office of Net Assessment in 2016. His tasks seem to have included slandering Mr. Flynn with accusations of having an affair with a young professor (a British national of Russian descent) Flynn met at an official dinner at Cambridge University when he was head of DIA in 2014,” Powell wrote of Halper.
Grassley requests of Baker to hand over information as to when and how he became aware of Halper’s role in the FBI’s Crossfire Hurricane counterintelligence investigation into Russian interference and the Trump campaign.
