First FBI agent at the scene of the Ronald Reagan shooting criticizes what agency has become

The retired FBI agent who was first on the scene when Ronald Reagan was shot has condemned the agency over revelations in the Durham report and its handling of the Republican investigation into the Biden family.

Thomas J. Baker was highly critical of the culture under Director Christopher Wray and the “abuse of power” by federal law enforcement.

In an interview with DailyMail.com, he said that in his more than 30 years of law enforcement, he has never seen behavior exposed by the findings of prosecutors John Durham.

The report released last month found there was not enough evidence to investigate Donald Trump’s ties to Russia before the 2016 election and tore up the Dirty Dossier Steele report.

Baker also said there’s no reason the FBI can’t turn over the document the GOP says describes a criminal scheme involving Joe Biden, and criticized the agency and the intelligence community for keeping Hunter’s laptop and its contents under the rug. had swept.

He was an FBI special agent for 33 years in roles related to crime and terrorism. He also has experience as a legal attaché in Canberra, Australia, and Paris, France.

When President Reagan was shot by John Hinckley Jr. in 1981, he was the first agent on the scene.

He then led the investigation into what happened by taking into account what the agency learned after the assassination of John F. Kennedy.

Since leaving the FBI, he has watched in dismay as it has become embroiled in a myriad of scandals and blamed by Republicans, and that the FBI has become “politicized” and “armed.”

He explained this criticism in his recent book The Fall of the FBI: How a Once Great Agency Became a Threat to Democracy.

In it, he describes the “fall” of the FBI from the days after 9/11 and the signing of the Patriot Act and the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, or FISA – which has now been used to target American citizens.

The law became a focal point of the Durham Report. Carter Page, a former Trump campaign aide, was placed under surveillance for a year under a FISA warrant.

Since his book was published in December, Baker says many of his views have been confirmed by Durham’s conclusions.

The final report found extensive abuse by agents trying to find ties between Trump and the Kremlin before the 2016 election.

“The fact that they (the agency) would open an investigation for no probable cause is beyond shocking. It’s unbelievable,” Baker said of the conclusion of the Durham report.

Baker explained how the FBI’s field office in Washington would call in agents working on sensitive political investigations to make sure they had adequate cause.

He said FISA used to target foreign agents living in the United States.

“After September 11, the law was changed and changed again and again.

Now, as it came to light in the Durham report, it was used against an American – Carter Page, who was found not to be involved in any kind of conspiracy or conspiracy.

“Yet he was subjected to this excessively intrusive electronic surveillance for a year.

“That’s an absolute abuse that Congress could correct in the future.”

“Thousands of Americans are subjected to this monitoring every year.

“Of course there’s no story and there’s no way of knowing who they are.

“It’s not like in a traditional court, Congress can fix that. They created the FISA law. They can change the Pfizer law to restrict it, to eliminate surveillance of US persons.

‘It’s not just a few bad apples, it’s bad culture. The culture needs to be changed. That’s very hard to do, but it can be done.

“Every time something happens, someone is fired or allowed to resign.”

While those agents have stepped aside, he says it does nothing to resolve the agency’s underlying issues.

One example he cited was top FBI agent Timothy Thibault, who resigned in August 2022 amid intense investigations into claims he suppressed the Hunter investigation.

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There were others in the government, not necessarily the FBI, who made that false report. Uh, what has it been two years since the original Hunter Biden laptop was most likely Russian information.

“The FBI had owned the laptop for some time.

“They have the technical capacity and the personnel that they could determine in a very short time that it was real, maybe within a few days or hours.

“So there has really been an effort by a lot of people to derail the Hunter Biden investigation.

And the other thing that Congress has exposed is that millions and millions of dollars are flowing into, uh, members of the Biden family from foreign accounts, particularly in China.

“I only mean that to everyone, unless you’re extremely naive, that really stinks.”

Baker is referring to the slew of banking transactions uncovered by Republicans that show the flow of money from Beijing-linked accounts that ended up with Biden’s relatives.

It is part of the sweeping GOP investigation into the First Family and alleged influence that began when Joe Biden was vice president.

One file has become a focus of the investigation – and Republicans believe it could be devastating.

The document in question is the FD 1023 form, which FBI Director Wray will hand over to members of the Congressional Oversight Committee.

Republicans say this document details a criminal scheme involving Biden, a foreigner, and a bribe that could amount to $5 million.

The form is typically used to record information obtained from a confidential human source.

This could be from a collaborating foreign service such as MI5.

Baker suggests that the FBI may be hesitant to hand over the document, fearing it could lead to identification of the source.

But he says there’s a way around it, and that’s simply by redacting the name and any personal details.

“It’s been that way for 50 years.

“I worked in the FBI Bureau of Congressional and Public Affairs, and we regularly received requests from Congress, and we were always able to comply.

He says he was able to distribute the information while protecting the source by rewriting the contents of the document.

When Congress first made this request to the Bureau, they could have come back and said, “We’d like to respond by giving you this redacted version that would obscure the person’s identity.”

“I don’t know why they’re being so nasty to Congress right now and making such a big deal out of it.

“There are several ways to accommodate Congress without endangering the informant.”