Former FBI general counsel James Baker is under criminal investigation for unauthorized leaks to the media.
The development was made public in a letter sent Tuesday to the office of U.S. Attorney John Durham for the District of Connecticut by Republican Reps. Jim Jordan of Ohio and Mark Meadows of North Carolina.
In the letter, the two lawmakers cite the transcript of a congressional interview with Baker and his lawyer in October. “You may or may not know, [Baker has] been the subject of a leak investigation … a criminal leak investigation that’s still active at the Justice Department,” lawyer Daniel Levin told lawmakers, according to the transcript cited by Jordan and Meadows.
Levin then declined to answer any more questions about conversations Baker had with reporters. “As we continue our oversight and investigative work, we felt it prudent to write to you seeking an update. Without being apprised of the contours of your leak investigation and Baker’s role, we run the risk of inadvertently interfering with your prosecutorial plans,” Jordan and Meadows wrote.
Baker was appointed FBI general counsel in January 2014 and reassigned by newly appointed director Christopher Wray in December 2017. Jordan and Meadows were part of a House GOP effort investigating how the Justice Department and FBI acted ahead of the 2016 presidential election.
The letter comes days after a New York Times reported detailed how senior FBI officials, in the days after former FBI Director James Comey was fired in May 2017, opened an investigation into whether President Trump was working on behalf of Russia.
“Not only would it be an issue of obstructing an investigation, but the obstruction itself would hurt our ability to figure out what the Russians had done, and that is what would be the threat to national security,” Baker said in his testimony to House investigators, portions of which were read to the New York Times.
Politico reported in December 2017 that House Republicans had begun investigating Baker’s contact with Mother Jones reporter David Corn and their communications in the weeks leading up to the November 2016 election.
Corn was the first to report the existence of the Steele dossier, which has unverified allegations of ties between Trump and Russians. The revelation of Durham’s investigation marks the latest confirmation of a leak investigation into former FBI officials.
Former FBI Deputy Director Andrew McCabe was fired for lying to federal investigators about his role in an unauthorized media leak pertaining to the Clinton Foundation, and his case was eventually referred to the U.S. attorney in Washington. McCabe resigned and went on paid leave in January 2018, before being fired in March 2018.
Durham is a seasoned prosecutor, who has overseen a handful of high-profile cases. From 2008 to 2012, he served as acting U.S. attorney for the Eastern District of Virginia, where he investigated the destruction of CIA videotapes of detainee interrogations. He was also the special attorney in Massachusetts overseeing criminal conduct by FBI and other law enforcement corruption in Boston and their ties with the mafia.
