Former FBI lawyer: conspiracy to register, withdraw Trump not a joke

By John Salomon
Cotributor Opinion

Do not tell former FBI General Counsel James Baker that these now infamous talks about the President's secret registration Donald TrumpDonald John TrumpTrump and Kushner meet Kanye West at the White House: Pompeo report calls on Saudi Arabia to support investigation into missing journalist Five findings of first debate in Indiana Senate MORE and using the tapes to remove him from his duties was a joke.

He does not seem to believe it. And he was in a prime position: he was in power in the office in May 2017, when the discussions took place.

Baker told Congress last week that his boss – then acting director of the FBI Andrew McCabeAndrew George McCabeThe winners and losers of Supreme Court confirmation Christine Blasey Ford has a credibility problem The unbearable hypocrisy of James Comey's Act II PLUS – was very serious about surreptitiously recording the 45th President and using the evidence to prove that Trump should be removed from office, according to my sources.

Baker told legislators that it was not at the meeting that McCabe had with the Deputy Attorney General Rod RosensteinRod Jay RosensteinTrump about Rosenstein: "No Change" Trump has "well discussed" with Rosenstein The 12:30 pm Hill Report – Presented by Citi – Trump does not intend to refer Rosenstein | Kavanaugh fallout | Official Swear Today Today MORE in which the subject came. But he had first-hand conversations with McCabe and McCabe's FBI attorney, Lisa Page, about the issue.

"Regarding Baker, it was a real plan being discussed," said a source directly aware of the congressional investigation. "It was not a matter of laughing for the FBI."

Baker's testimony surfaced just days before Rosenstein was privately questioned by legislators on the House Judiciary Committee on Thursday.

Since the New York Times published its charges for the first time, Rosenstein, the head of the Department of Justice (DOJ), has been trying to downplay his role. His office hinted that he thought the discussions were a joke, that Rosenstein had never given the order to lead such a plot and that he did not think that Trump should be removed from office.

But making these statements through a spokesperson is a little different than asking Rosenstein himself to face Congress and answer questions under pain of felony if lawmakers think he's lying.

Baker's account to lawmakers this month clearly complicates an already complicated situation for Rosenstein before Congress, assuming he shows up for Thursday's interview.

But even more so, Baker's story reveals an extraordinary conversation in which at least some senior FBI officials thought it was their responsibility to try to capture the president on tape and then to get some information. 39 go to see the secretaries of his president, in the hope of persuading senior management of the administration to remove the president from power.

Even more extraordinary is the timing of these discussions: according to Baker's story, they would have gone to the window surrounding the firing of FBI director James Comey. Could it be that the leaders of a wounded and stunned FBI are seeking revenge for the fact that their boss fired with a secret registration operation?

I doubt that this is the power that Congress intended to exercise when it created the FBI a century ago, or the circumstances in which the authors of the 25th Amendment had imagined the removal of a president.

He was not a disabled president at the time. He exercised his powers fully – but in a way, the FBI leaders did not like him.

And that makes the FBI's involvement in conversations between magnetic recordings, then dump-Trump, obviously political – even though Rosenstein felt this idea was ridiculous.

Do not forget that it's the same FBI who, a few months earlier in the 2016 election, had seen his chief counter-intelligence agent Peter Strzok talk to Page – his lover and the McCabe's lead counsel – using their official powers to "stop" Trump in the election and have an "insurance policy" against the GOP candidate. This insurance policy looks more and more like an unverified record created by the British intelligence agent Christopher Steele – an enemy of Trump himself – that was bought and paid for by the Democratic Party and Hillary ClintonHillary Diane Rodham ClintonHillicon Valley: cyberattacks reveal flaws in campaign security | Google reveals a bug that exposed 500 000 users | The Facebook executive hosted the Kavanaugh celebration | Apple denies China an NYT crime report: Rick Gates seeks to use fake identities online in the 2016 Trump Election Countdown campaign: the mid-term fight between Kavanaugh and his opponents | McConnell sees a live base | Dems count on women to take over House | How the voters of the suburbs could decide to control the Congress | Taylor Swift Supports Tennessee Dems | Poll finds Cruz is 5 at Texas PLUSThe campaign through their mutual law firm.

"You are moving away from the interview with Baker undoubtedly about the fact that FBI leaders in 2016-2017 saw themselves more than just a neutral investigative agency, but in reality as a force to end the Trump election before it happens and to overthrow it perhaps after the end of the elections, "said a source directly aware of the situation. Congressional inquiry.

Baker has provided other valuable information in his interview with Congress. As I reported last week, he revealed that he had accepted information as part of the investigation into Russia emanating from a National Democratic Committee lawyer.

And my sources also confirm that Baker admitted receiving a version of Steele's file from leftist journalist David Corn of Mother Jones magazine and forwarding it to the Strzok team. Maize says that it was produced in November 2016, just after the elections.

This transaction is important for two reasons. First, at the time, Steele had just been fired from the FBI probe for disclosing information to the media and he was not expected to assist further with the probe. Maize has essentially served as a back door to allow information to continue to circulate.

Second, the FBI used the news media as a source of investigation outside the usual chain of evidence.

Whatever you think of Rosenstein or the investigation of Russia, Baker's statements in Congress have implications for all Americans.

The FBI was created to investigate crimes and stop foreign intelligence and terrorist threats. It has never been designed to serve as an intermediary in the political process of elections or in the implementation of the 25th amendment.

John Solomon is an award-winning investigative journalist whose work over the years has revealed the failures of US intelligence and the FBI before the September 11 attacks, the misuse by federal scientists of foster children and veterans in drug experiments and many cases of political corruption. He is executive vice president of The Hill's for video.

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