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Former FBI General Counsel James Baker testified before the House judiciary and oversight committees on Oct. 3 and Oct. 18, 2018. (Samira Bouaou/The Epoch Times)
Former FBI General Counsel James Baker testified before the House judiciary and oversight committees on Oct. 3 and Oct. 18, 2018. (Samira Bouaou/The Epoch Times)MORE
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EXCLUSIVE: Transcripts of Former Top FBI Lawyer Detail Pervasive Abnormalities in Trump Probe
BY JEFF CARLSON
January 18, 2019 Updated: January 25, 2019
Former top FBI attorney James Baker admitted to House lawmakers in October last year that the investigation into alleged collusion between the Trump 2016 presidential campaign and Russia was riddled with abnormalities.
Confronted with a damning summary of abnormalities, bias, and omissions that transpired during the investigation, Baker told Congress that the investigation was indeed “highly unusual.”
“I had a jaundiced eye about everything, yes. I had skepticism about all this stuff. I was concerned about all of this. This whole situation was horrible, and it was novel and we were trying to figure out what to do, and it was highly unusual,” Baker told lawmakers.
Members of the House Judiciary and Oversight committees conducted the interviews in an unclassified setting, with agency counsel present to ensure that classified information didn’t enter into the unclassified setting. The transcripts of the interviews haven’t been publicly released, but were obtained for this article.
Baker served as the FBI’s general counsel when the bureau investigated the Trump campaign, and also Hillary Clinton’s use of an unauthorized private email server. During two days of testimony on Oct. 3 and Oct. 18, he told lawmakers that he believed even toward the end of the Clinton investigation that she should have been charged over her “alarming, appalling” mishandling of classified information.
He argued with others, including then-FBI Director James Comey, about the issue all the way toward the end of the investigation, but was ultimately persuaded that Clinton should be exonerated.
“My original belief … after having conducted the investigation and towards the end of it, then sitting down and reading a binder of her materials, I thought that it was alarming, appalling, whatever words I said, and argued with others about why they thought she shouldn’t be charged,” Baker told lawmakers.
As of October 2018, almost two years after the Clinton probe concluded, Baker still believed that the conduct of the former secretary of state and her associates was “appalling,” with regard to the handling of classified information.
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