Rep. Doug Collins, R-Ga., released the transcript of former FBI General Counsel James Baker on Tuesday, the latest in a series of such disclosures by the ranking member on the House Judiciary Committee.
The 152-page transcript is from a closed-door interview that Baker gave on Oct. 3, 2018 in front of a joint session of the House Judiciary and Oversight committees.
“The Americans deserve transparency and they deserve to know what transpired at the highest levels of the FBI and at the origin of the probe into President Trump’s campaign,” Collins said.
Baker was the FBI’s top lawyer from 2014 to 2018, and he held that key role during two high-profile investigations — the Clinton investigation and the Trump-Russia investigation.
The FBI’s investigation of Hillary Clinton’s private email server and her mishandling of classified information, dubbed Midyear Exam, ended with no charges ultimately being filed. During his testimony, Baker described Clinton’s behavior as “alarming” and “appalling.” Baker said he “argued with others about why they thought she shouldn’t be charged” although he ultimately agreed with the decision not to charge her.
Baker also admitted that, upon seeing some of the texts exchanged between FBI special agent Peter Strzok and FBI lawyer Lisa Page, he was “quite alarmed” and “concerned about is whether any decisions had been taken — or not taken — in the Midyear case that were driven by political bias of any sort.”
The FBI’s investigation of Russian interference and its possible ties to Trump or Trump associates, dubbed Crossfire Hurricane, would eventually carry over into special counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation which ended in March with no charges of criminal collusion. Baker admitted he was “concerned” about the investigation, saying it was “novel” and “highly unusual.”
Baker further testified that in 2016 he met with Michael Sussmann, a lawyer from Perkins Coie, who gave him unspecified information from “cyber experts” not related to the dossier but still related to the Trump-Russia investigation. Perkins Coie was the law firm hired by the Clinton campaign and the Democratic National Committee during the 2016 presidential election. It’s the same firm that hired Fusion GPS, which then in turn hired ex-British spy Christopher Steele, whose infamous memos were used in Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act applications against at least one Trump associate.
When asked if an outside counsel had ever before tried to pass along information to him as general counsel for the purposes of then passing along to the FBI, Baker said, “That’s the only one I can remember.” Baker said he passed Sussman’s information to either Strzok or former assistant director of the FBI’s counterintelligence division Bill Priestap. He said Sussman told him that he’d given the information to the New York Times as well.
Beyond his contacts with Perkins Coie, Baker also admitted talking with at least one journalist about these issues in 2016, testifying that he repeatedly spoke with David Corn, whom he called a “long-time friend.” Corn is a journalist at Mother Jones who wrote an article titled “A Veteran Spy Has Given the FBI Information Alleging a Russian Operation to Cultivate Donald Trump” on Oct. 31, 2016 — just days before the 2016 presidential election.
Baker said, “David had part of what is now referred to as the Steele dossier and he talked to me about that and wanted to provide that to the FBI.” Baker said Corn passed along a portion of the dossier to Baker, who, just as he did with Sussman’s info, then handed it over to Priestap.
Baker said he reviewed the “probable cause” portion of the FISA application against Carter Page. He said he didn’t usually get involved with the FISA approval process, but that he “wanted to make sure that we were filing something that would adhere to the law and stand up over time.”
In his testimony, Baker also revealed that, at a meeting in the wake of the firing of FBI Director James Comey, Page and former FBI Deputy Director Andrew McCabe both told him that they took Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein’s suggestion that he “wear a wire” to record conversations with President Trump seriously. Rosenstein has denied this account, while sources told NBC News that he was only joking about secretly recording the president.
Baker also referred to the “25th Amendment conversation” at that meeting on whether to invoke the amendment to remove President Trump from office, and said that he was told that at the time “there were two members of the Cabinet who were willing to go down this road already.” He did not elaborate on who the two Cabinet members were.
While speaking on the floor of the House announcing the release of this transcript on Tuesday, Collins made it clear that he “will continue to work to release as many transcripts as possible, including the entirety of Mr. Baker’s interview with the Judiciary Committee. The American people deserve the truth.”
In recent weeks, Collins has released transcripts of the congressional interviews of Strzok, Page, Justice Department official Bruce Ohr, his wife and Fusion GPS contractor Nellie Ohr, former Trump campaign aide George Papadopoulos, and former assistant director of the FBI’s counterintelligence division Bill Priestap.
