A former top FBI lawyer told House lawmakers last year he personally involved himself in the warrant application to spy on then-Trump campaign aide Carter Page, admitting it was an “unusual move,” Fox News reported Monday.
James Baker, who left the FBI last year, told investigators he was involved early in the process of securing the FISA warrant, according to a confidential transcript of his October meeting with House investigators, Fox News reported.
Mr. Baker said he wanted to see the report before it went through the process to be finalized and went to former FBI Director James Comey, Fox News said quoting from a transcript.
“I wanted to see it and I wanted to read it because I knew it was sensitive,” the news outlet quotes him as saying.
Mr. Baker said such steps were unusual, but necessary because the situation was “sensitive,” according to the report.
“I did not … at that point in time when I was at the FBI … almost all of the FISA applications did not go through me,” Fox News quoted Mr. Baker as saying.
The FISA warrant was based, in part, on an unverified salacious dossier, financed by the Democratic National Committee and the Hillary Clinton campaign.
• Jeff Mordock can be reached at jmordock@washingtontimes.com.
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