The former FBI general counsel said he didn't agree with the attorney general's assertion that the FBI spied on President Donald Trump's campaign. | Evan Vucci/AP Photo White House Ex-FBI lawyer says he's disturbed by evidence of Trump obstruction

Former FBI general counsel Jim Baker said Friday he's troubled by obstruction allegations outlined in the Mueller report, explaining that even if there isn't a possibility of charging President Donald Trump, there still appears to be a "pattern of corruption."

"It's troubling to say the least. It's alarming," said Baker, now the director of national security and cybersecurity at the R Street Institute. "Even if it doesn't rise to the level of illegality, it sure looks like a pattern of corruption."


During an interview at the Brookings Institution, Baker also refuted the notion that the Russia investigation was an "attempted coup" — a claim Trump has repeatedly alleged.

"(The campaign probe) was about Russia. We've written about this. It was about Russia, period, full stop," Baker said. "When the Papadopoulos information comes across our radar screen it's coming across in the sense we were always looking at Russia. I don't know how long the FBI had its focus on Russia, but it predates the Soviet Union...we have been thinking about Russia as a threat actor and the Soviet Union before for decades and decades."

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Baker also echoed comments made by FBI Director Christopher Wray Tuesday when he said not investigating the interactions between Trump's campaign and Russian foreign agents would have gone against the FBI's duty.

Baker said he also didn't agree with Attorney General William Barr's assertion that the FBI spied on Trump's campaign, saying: "I honestly don't know what he's referring to." He added that if Barr somehow had "other information available to him that somehow has been made public yet" that he would be "eager to hear it, but I don't understand it."

"Given the fact we have been focused on the Russians as a threat actor for a long, long time and given what was going on with respective e-mail dumps and hacking and the connection with those to the Russians in that summer and then this thing drops," Baker said. "I think it would've been malpractice, dereliction of duty, that it would have even been highly, highly inappropriate for us not to pursue it — and pursue it aggressively."

Wray reassigned Baker from his general counsel role in 2017, and he left the agency in May 2018. In January 2019, Baker came under investigation for potential leaks, according to information released by Republicans on the House Oversight Committee following closed-door testimony to lawmakers in October.

During the testimony, Baker confirmed that top officials at the FBI were "concerned that the President may have been working to benefit Russia," according to CNN, particularly after the firing of FBI Director James Comey.

“So there was — there was a discussion between those folks, possibly all of the folks that you’ve identified, about whether or not President Trump had been ordered to fire Jim Comey by the Russian government?” asked Rep. John Ratcliffe (R-Texas), one of the committee members interviewing Baker.

“I wouldn’t say ordered. I guess I would say ... acting at the behest of and somehow following directions, somehow executing their will,” he said. “[A]nd so literally an order or not, I don’t know.”

His testimony was compiled in an extensive 152-page transcript, in which he recounted conversations between former Deputy FBI Director Andrew McCabe — who assumed leadership of the FBI after Comey's firing — and then Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein about whether Rosenstein could wear a wire to gather evidence in an obstruction probe. Though officials close to Rosenstein have called his suggestion a joke, Baker told lawmakers that he had a far different impression and that, "This was not a joking sort of time. This was pretty dark."

Baker also ran through a list of officials he said were worried that the president may have fired Comey to hinder the Russia investigation.

"The leadership of the FBI, so the acting director ... The heads of the national security apparatus, the national security folks within the FBI, the people that were aware of the underlying investigation and who had been focused on it," he said.

Despite all of this, Baker wrote in a Lawfare blog post Friday that he recognizes and accepts criticisms of the actions taken by bureau agents because "The FBI is not perfect. People make mistakes and use bad judgment." He also encouraged people both in the overall administration and in the bureau to move forward with a positive attitude to help mend the gap between the Oval Office and FBI.

"I did hold a high-ranking position at the FBI—an organization that I love—and I have seen colleagues mistreated. And the president of the United States has made negative public comments about both the bureau and me," he wrote. "Notwithstanding all that, I am refusing to choose hate as a response. I am choosing love, even if I don’t fully understand what I mean by that right now. I am choosing that path because I think that is what is best for America."