After President Trump abruptly fired former FBI Director James Comey, several top FBI officials met to discuss whether Trump was behaving in what appeared to be “at the behest” of Russia before it launched its investigation, CNN reported Monday.
According to transcripts of interviews between two FBI officials and House investigators obtained by CNN, the officials debated a “range” of “extremes” before the probe into whether Trump was working for Russia commenced.
The group of officials discussed whether Trump was “acting at the behest of and somehow following directions, somehow executing (Russia’s) will. That was one extreme,” then-FBI counsel James Baker told House investigators last year, according to the transcript.
“The other extreme is that the President is completely innocent, and we discussed that too,” he said. “There’s a range of things this could possibly be. We need to investigate, because we don’t know whether, you know, the worst-case scenario is possibly true or the President is totally innocent and we need to get this thing over with — and so he can move forward with his agenda.”
A transcript of an interview with former FBI attorney Lisa Page also reveals that officials had discussed starting a probe into Trump’s behavior before he fired Comey, according to CNN.
The New York Times reported over the weekend that the FBI looked into whether Trump was working for Russia in the early days of his presidency.
