James Baker, the former top lawyer of the FBI, said senior bureau officials — including at least one deemed to be free of anti-Trump bias — discussed the possibility in May 2017 that President Donald Trump had fired FBI Director James Comey “at the behest of” the Russian government.
In testimony to two Republican-led committees last October, Baker described mounting concerns that crystallized in the frantic days after the FBI director’s ouster, days that were punctuated by Trump’s on-air declaration that he fired Comey because of the Russia probe and his chummy Oval Office meeting with senior Russian officials, at which he reportedly trashed Comey as a “nut job.”
Baker described a discussion in those turbulent days that he had with Andrew McCabe — who became acting FBI director after Comey’s departure — and the bureau’s top counterintelligence official Bill Priestap, as well as top national security official Carl Ghattas. He also said it was possible that bureau attorney Lisa Page and counterintelligence agent Peter Strzok — whose anti-Trump text messages have drawn attention from Trump and Republicans — attended the meeting as well.
“So there was — there was a discussion between those folks, possibly all of the folks that you’ve identified, about whether or not President Trump had been ordered to fire Jim Comey by the Russian government?” asked Rep. John Ratcliffe (R-Texas), one of the committee members interviewing Baker.
“I wouldn’t say ordered. I guess I would say … acting at the behest of and somehow following directions, somehow executing their will,” he said. “[A]nd so literally an order or not, I don’t know.”
[…]
Mueller examined whether Trump attempted to obstruct the probe, and Baker’s testimony provides a window into the FBI’s view of that question in the immediate days following Comey’s firing. Mueller, according to a limited excerpt revealed by Barr, declined to reach a “traditional prosecutorial judgment” on whether Trump obstructed justice, but Mueller’s analysis has not been revealed.
Baker said the discussion among the top officials was meant to discuss the range of possibilities behind Trump’s firing of Comey. Acting at Russia’s urging “was one extreme,” he said.
“The other extreme is that the president is completely innocent, and we discussed that too,” Baked noted. “And so — and then you have things in the middle. And so —— so that was how it came up. There’s a range of things this could possibly be. We need to investigate, because we don’t know whether, you know, the worst-case scenario is possibly true or the president is totally innocent and we need to get this thing over with — and so he can move forward with his agenda.”
“The leadership of the FBI, so the acting director … the heads of the national security apparatus, the national security folks within the FBI, the people that were aware of the underlying investigation and who had been focused on it,” Baker said, running through a list of officials he said were worried that the president might have fired Comey to hinder the Russia investigation.
Baker said other FBI executives informed him that Justice Department officials raised concerns about obstruction by Trump as well.
Whatever, just get the report already…