election and whether any americans were involved according to james a. baker that served as general counsel until late 2017. quote, he privately testified in october before house investigators who were examining the fbi s handling of the full russia inquiry. that testimony has not been publicly released but in a portion of it read to the times james baker said quote not only would it be an issue of obstruction of the investigation, the obstruction would hurt our ability to figure out what the russians had done and that is what would be the threat to national security. joining us now is congressman jim heinz. so great to have you here tonight. good evening, joy. your reaction first to this reporting. well, it s extraordinary. i mean, this is one of those historical moments where, you know, we ve been so accustomed
intelligence elements were coupled together into one investigation, former law enforcement officials said in interviews in recent weeks because if mr. trump ousted the head of the fbi to impede or even end the russia investigation, that was both the possible crime and national security concern. the times tonight reports getting access to the testimony of the top lawyer at the fbi at the time, fbi general counsel james baker. and then from mr. baker s house testimony, quote, not only would it have been issue of obstruction, it would hurt our about tility to figure out what russians had done and that s a threat to national security. in his testimony, portions were read to the new york times. what a story. joining us now is michael schmidt. part of the three-person team breaking the story.
we are about to get expert help painting a devastating picture of the eight days between when donald trump fired james comey in the appointment of robert mueller. that time included the fbi deciding to open a counter intelligence investigation into donald trump himself, to determine whether the president of the united states was secretly working on behalf of russia. quote, the decision to investigate mr. trump himself was an aggressive move by fbi officials who were confronting the chaotic aftermath of the firing of mr. comey and enduring the president s verbal assaults on the russia investigation as a witch hunt. quote, a debate was taking shape among a former law enforcement official outside the case over whether fbi investigators overreacted in opening the counter intelligence inquiry
al ba ambassador into the oval office and says he relief aid lot of pressure on him in relation to the russia investigation and calls comey a nutjob and when this comes out, it further unnerves the fbi agents saying why did he have these foreign adversaries into the oval office? why would he be so willing to do this and tell them by firing comey, he alleviated pressure on himself. michael schmidt, one of three that broke this story tonight. congratulations, appreciate your time tonight. thank you. thanks for having me. responses are pouring in from this breaking news. we got this moments ago from sarah sanders. quote, this is absurd, she says, james comey was fired because he s a disgraced partisan hack and his deputy andrew mccabe in charge of the time is a known liar fired by the fbi unlike
from the president and his team which is disconcerting to say the least. so i know that this weekend we also got a transcript from former fbi director james comey s house testimony. in fact, trump has been weighing in on that today as you can imagine in a series of tweets accusing comey of leaking and lying in his testimony. that was on last friday. is it part of trump s legal strategy to distract the public from the new russia developments and why would he think this works at all going after james comey when we re this far into the process? the president s legal strategy has been to try to discredit all of the people who are involved in the investigation at the early stages when they started looking into his campaign and ties to russia. he s talk to a number of people who have left including james comey, lisa page, peter strzok. a lot of the people have been targets of the president s defenders in congress. we saw that during this closed door hearing where they put out