James Baker Reacts to President Trump’s Accusations

CHRISTIANE AMANPOUR: So, do you kind of regret it now or not? I mean, because, look, again, it’s really been a bone of contention ever since that election, with Hillary Clinton saying that she believes that Comey cost her, to a great extent, the election by revealing those e-mails which ended up being much ado about nothing according to Director Comey himself. And, you know, President Obama who had wanted to talk about this, but decided not to make it public, because he thought that it would — he would be accused of a political end run. I mean, do you think that it was just all way too politicized, something this serious in terms of an attack on national security and the Democratic process?

JAMES BAKER, FORMER GENERAL COUNSEL, FBI: Well, what was going on inside the FBI was not politicized. We were not interested in politics. After the Clinton matter, we wanted to stay as far away from politics as we possibly could. We were all sick of it, frankly. And we didn’t — we don’t — people don’t go into the FBI because you want to work in politics. And so, we wanted to stay as far away from any of that as we possibly could. Looking back, you know, I don’t know what we could have done differently. It was a very uncertain time. We really didn’t know what we were dealing with. We didn’t know what the Russians were up to. And so, consistent with our practice and counter-intelligence investigations in that kind of a setting you keep quiet and you try to sort out before you do anything that might give an advantage to your adversary.

AMANPOUR: So, I guess the obvious question, I know you’re no longer there but how much do you know now apart from the generalities? And on a scale of 1 to 10, how prepared do you think the U.S. democratic institutions, the election, is? How prepared is it to defend against another such attack?

BAKER: Well, that’s a tough thing for me to answer in terms of quantifying it. I mean, I think, from people I have talked to and briefings I have been to or, you know, conferences and things like that, you know, the Department of Homeland Security in the United States is very focuses on this, other elements of the government are as well, the Intelligence Community, the FBI and so on. It really does — because so many parts of the U.S. government have to deal with the situation, it really does require leadership from the White House and from the president of the United States. And I would encourage the president to really focus on this and make sure that all elements of the government are energized and focused on dealing what is a real threat, as clearly articulated in the 448-page Mueller report.

AMANPOUR: OK. So, I’m going to get to — you just mentioned the president, but before I ask you about what he’s been saying about you, let’s just play what he actually said publicly over the weekend in an interview, kind of hinting or confirming that, you know, they had taken steps, he had ordered steps to be taken around the last election. Let’s just play this.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

STEVE HILTON, FOX NEWS: It’s been reported this year that you personally authorized a cyber attack on Russia around the time of the midterms last year in order to stop the meddling in the midterm election. Now, that’s strong action for — is that true? Did you authorize that?

DONALD TRUMP, U.S. PRESIDENT: Well, I’d rather not say that.

(END VIDEO CLIP)