This post first appeared at Fellowship of the Minds
The White House insider known as Q or Q Anon has been hinting at an imminent political turning point he calls “Red October”.
Yesterday afternoon came news that FBI has completed investigating Brett Kavanaugh, the agency’s 7th investigation of the judge, and a full Senate vote is expected this weekend.
Today was the deadline for Attorney General Jeff Sessions to hand in McCabe, FISA and Russian investigation documents subpoenaed by the House Judiciary Committee.
Add this to signs of a “Red October”:
Catherine Herridge reports for Fox News that former top FBI lawyer James Baker gave “explosive” closed-door testimony yesterday, Oct. 3, detailing for congressional investigators how Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s Russia probe was handled in an “abnormal fashion” reflecting “political bias,” according to two Republican lawmakers present for the deposition — Rep. Mark Meadows (North Carolina) and Rep. Jim Jordan (Ohio).
James A. Baker, who as General Counsel of the FBI had a closely working relationship with former FBI Director James Comey and was a recipient of at least one Comey memo, resigned from the bureau in May this year.
Meadows and Jordan would not provide many specifics about the private transcribed interview, citing a confidentiality agreement with Baker and his attorneys. However, they indicated in broad terms that Baker was cooperative and forthcoming about the genesis of the Russia case in 2016, and about the FISA surveillance warrant application for Trump campaign aide Carter Page in October 2016.
Rep. Mark Meadows said, “Some of the things that were shared were explosive in nature. This witness [Baker] confirmed that things were done in an abnormal fashion. That’s extremely troubling.” Indeed, Peter Strzok, the FBI agent who opened the Russia case, FBI lawyer Lisa Page and others had sent politically charged texts, and have since left the bureau.
Rep. Jim Jordan said, “During the time that…that DOJ and FBI were putting together the FISA (surveillance warrant) during the time prior to the election — there was another source giving information directly to the FBI, which we found the source to be pretty explosive.”
Meadows and Jordan would not elaborate on the source, or answer questions about whether the source was a reporter. They did stress that the source who provided information to the FBI’s Russia case was not previously known to congressional investigators.
Baker is at the heart of surveillance abuse allegations, and his deposition lays the groundwork for next week’s planned closed-door interview with Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein. Baker, as the FBI’s top lawyer, helped secure the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) warrant on Page, as well as three subsequent renewals. Prior to the deposition, Republican investigators said they believed Baker could explain why information about the British ex-spy behind a salacious Trump-related dossier, Christopher Steele, and Steele’s apparent bias against then-candidate Trump, were withheld from the FISA court, and whether other exculpatory information was known to Rosenstein when he signed the final FISA renewal for Page in June 2017.
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