The recently released transcript of testimony from the FBI’s top lawyer before a joint congressional committee hearing confirms that the “collusion” during the 2016 presidential was not between Russia and the Trump campaign.
Former General Counsel James Baker admitted that the real collusion was between the leftist media, the Clinton presidential campaign, the Democratic National Committee, the law firm for the two, and anti-Trump Deep Staters at the FBI.
Baker didn’t say it that way, of course. But that’s the upshot of the testimony.
Anti-Trump Conspiracy
As with the explosive news that FBI and anti-Trump Deep Staters were planning an administrative coup d’etat to overthrow the president using the 25th Amendment to the Constitution — which provides Congress and the Cabinet a procedure to remove the president if he is unable to do his job — Baker’s revelation of collusion between the FBI, Democrats, and the hate-Trump media surfaced months ago.
Writing in The Hill, John Solomon divulged the bombshell in October, but not until GOP Representative Doug Collins of Georgia released Baker’s secret testimony before a joint meeting of the Judiciary and Government Reform and Oversight Committees last week was proof of the anti-Trump conspiracy available in black and white.
The Washington Times dug into the transcript and pulled out the relevant testimony for yesterday’s edition.
Baker testified that he received part of the anti-Trump Steele Dossier from hard-left journalist David Corn, and other anti-Trump information from Michael Sussmann, a lawyer at Perkins Coie, the firm that represented the DNC and the Clinton campaign.
As Solomon described it, Perkins Coie is the “firm used by the DNC and Hillary Clinton’s campaign to secretly pay research firm Fusion GPS and Christopher Steele, a former British intelligence operative, to compile a dossier of uncorroborated raw intelligence alleging Trump and Moscow were colluding to hijack the presidential election.”
That dossier, “mostly unverified, was then used by the FBI as the main evidence seeking a Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) warrant targeting the Trump campaign in the final days of the campaign.”
Corn and Sussmann
Baker testified that Corn was “was anxious to get this into the hands of the FBI. And being the person at the FBI that he knew the best, he wanted to give it to me.” He admitted speaking to Corn, an old friend, repeatedly during the campaign.
Baker said he gave the Corn material to the head of the bureau’s counterintelligence division, and said he didn’t read it because he was “uncomfortable handling evidence.”
But Baker also had a personal relationship with Sussmann, who gave Baker Trump-Russia unspecified information unrelated to the Steele dossier.
Baker and Sussmann knew each from their days together at the criminal division of the Justice Department. Sussmann, Baker recalled, worked in the “computer crime area.”
Baker testified that he did not recall whether Sussmann divulged his relationship with the DNC and Clinton campaign when he, Sussmann, gave Baker the anti-Trump information. Sussmann “told me he had cyber experts that had obtained some information that they thought they should get into the hands of the FBI,” Baker testified.
Sussmann’s passing anti-Trump information to the FBI was not inappropriate, Baker testified, because “he as a citizen providing information to the FBI about a matter that they thought had either to do with a crime or some national security threat.”
Baker said he was worried about the material the FBI received. “I had skepticism about all this stuff. I was concerned about all of this,” he testified. “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 said his top concern was doing his job as his oath required.
Anti-Trump Conspiracy
In October, Solomon explained why the revelation about the Sussmann-Baker contacts are important:
It means the FBI had good reason to suspect the dossier was connected to the DNC’s main law firm and was the product of a Democratic opposition-research effort to defeat Trump — yet failed to disclose that information to the FISA court in October 2016, when the bureau applied for a FISA warrant to surveil Trump campaign adviser Carter Page.
“This is a bombshell that unequivocally shows the real collusion was between the FBI and Donald Trump’s opposition — the DNC, Hillary and a Trump-hating British intel officer — to hijack the election, rather than some conspiracy between Putin and Trump,” a knowledgeable source told me.
The Baker testimony, Solomon wrote, added to the “growing body of evidence that the FBI used mostly politically-motivated, unverified intelligence from an opponent to justify spying on the GOP nominee’s campaign — just weeks before Election Day.”
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