James Baker has long been in the crosshairs of Elon Musk, who became his boss on October 27th.
Baker played a key role in a series of events that led to the trial of Democratic attorney Michael Sussmann in May on charges of lying to the FBI.
He was not accused of giving false information to the FBI, but of lying about who he worked for.
The saga began when Sussmann received information from a group of data scientists who were analyzing strange internet data they believed to indicate secret communications between a server owned by the Trump Organization and a server owned by Alfa Bank, a Russian financial institution linked to the Kremlin. might indicate.
Sussmann then texted Baker, then the FBI’s General Counsel, to say that he had information the FBI should know.
“I’m coming alone – not on behalf of a client or company – wanting to help the office,” Sussmann wrote in his text message to Baker.
Baker testified that he was certain Sussmann was acting as an individual and probably would not have met him if he had worked for the Clinton campaign.
Sussmann, a cybersecurity specialist, had worked for the Democratic Party in connection with Russia’s hacking of servers and Russia’s release of emails from the servers.
Sussmann was also connected to the Democrats through one of his partners at the Perkins Coie law firm, Marc Elias, who represented the Clinton campaign and hired Fusion GPS.
But several people – including Elias – testified that Sussmann was indeed acting of his own volition, arguing that actually going to the FBI was not in the interests of the Clinton campaign, which would have preferred a New York Times article to reference the allegations would have alerted .
The FBI later ruled that the claims of ties between the Trump campaign and the Russian bank were unfounded.
Musk tweeted during the trial that he thought Sussmann made up “an elaborate hoax” about Russia to help Clinton.
On May 16, staunch pro-Trump Congressman Jim Jordan tweeted, “Christopher Steele prepared the dossier.
‘Glenn Simpson sold it to the press.
“Michael Sussman made it to the FBI.
“And the Democrats and the media lied to you about it.”
Musk then replied in the affirmative.
“All true,” he tweeted on May 20.
“I bet most people still don’t know that a Clinton campaign attorney used campaign funds to make up an elaborate hoax about Trump and Russia.
“One wonders what else is fake.”
On May 31, the jury concluded that Sussmann had not lied to the FBI and acquitted him.