Top FBI lawyer: We took Rosenstein talk of bugging the president very seriously
by Byron York
| October 09, 2018 06:00 AM
Not long after a 2017 meeting in which Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein reportedly discussed wearing a wire to secretly record conversations with President Trump, two top officials in the meeting, FBI Deputy Director Andrew McCabe and bureau lawyer Lisa Page, went to the office of a third FBI official, general counsel James Baker.
They told Baker what Rosenstein said, according to Baker's recent testimony to House investigators. And Baker took the news very seriously.
After Rosenstein's comments were reported in the New York Times last month, Rosenstein sent out word through intermediaries that he hadn't really meant it, that he was speaking sarcastically. But that is not how top FBI officials took it at the time.
"The thing that struck me the most was the serious look on Baker's face when he was describing it," one source close to the investigation said of Baker's House interview. "He was conveying that they [McCabe and Page] took it seriously, and because they took it seriously, he took it seriously."
"McCabe, Page, and Baker were talking about [secretly recording the president] as a real thing, and discussing it as a serious issue," said another source close to the investigation.
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https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/news/top-fbi-lawyer-we-took-rosenstein-talk-of-bugging-the-president-very-seriously
