The FBI’s top lawyer was torn over what to do when FBI Director James Comey asked in 2016 whether he should inform Congress that the bureau was reopening the investigation into Hillary Clinton’s emails.
FBI General Counsel James Baker had been told that FBI agents discovered between 600,000 and 1 million emails on disgraced former Rep. Anthony Weiner’s laptop relating to Clinton. The 2016 Democratic presidential nominee’s top aide, Huma Abedin, was married to Weiner, who was being investigated for sending illicit texts to an underage girl.
Baker, who left the FBI in May 2018, told author David Rohde that he felt like the “fates had thrown him a hundred-mile-an-hour fastball.”
Baker “believed it was likely that the FBI could find new evidence of wrongdoing by Clinton,” Rohde wrote in his recently released book, In Deep: The FBI, the CIA, and the Truth about America’s “Deep State.”
“She wins the election, we go to DOJ, and we recommend that they indict her before she becomes president,” Baker said, describing his nightmare scenario. “That’s not a good place for the country. That’s not a good place for the FBI.”
Baker also worried that the bureau’s credibility would be damaged if Comey did not inform Congress.
“I thought, ‘What is best for the law enforcement and judicial system?’” he said. “I said, ‘I thought the director had an obligation to notify Congress.’ Director Comey agreed with my advice.”
Comey told Congress of the new findings less than two weeks before the 2016 election, sending letters to the chairmen and chairwomen and ranking members of the eight committees that investigated Clinton’s use of a private email server while she was secretary of state.
The FBI conducted a criminal investigation during the 2016 election into Clinton’s use of the server. In July 2016, Comey, who was later fired by President Trump, publicly recommended that no charges be brought against Clinton, but he chastised her and her team for being “extremely careless” in handling classified information.
The FBI reopened the case 11 days before the election only to close it again days before voters went to the polls. Clinton has argued Comey’s handling of the investigation was one of the reasons she lost to Trump.
