CNN's Robert Baer: The Republican memo “is a piece of trash” and a “partisan attack on the FBI”

Former CIA officer Baer: The memo “is going to do our institutions serious damage, and I really worry about it.”

Written by Media Matters Staff

Published

From the February 2 edition of CNN Newsroom with Brooke Baldwin:

WOLF BLITZER (HOST): I want to get Bob Baer's reaction to what's unfolding right now. You used to serve in the CIA. 

ROBERT BAER (CNN INTELLIGENCE AND SECURITY ANALYST): Well, I'm worried about the FBI. If I were an FBI agent in the field now and picked up some information on Russia that was damaging to the president, or even helpful, I would not report it. I would think twice about it. I left the CIA, same thing. I reported stuff on Russian money coming into the campaign, and as the messenger, I became the target and I resigned from the CIA. It's as simple as that. So what you're having is an agency we depend upon to stop terrorism, that FBI agents are putting their lives on the line. And you look at this -- I'm sorry, it's a piece of trash, this 3 and a half-page memo. There's nothing classified in it. There's nothing -- it's a partisan attack on the FBI. And it's going to do our institutions serious damage, and I really worry about it. 

Previously:

Devin Nunes' “release the memo” saga is a transparent farce, but it's working

MSNBC's Chris Hayes: Carter Page’s conspiracy theory about what happened to him “is now the official conspiracy theory of the people that run the government”

Fox's John Roberts inaccurately attacks the Trump-Russia dossier as “false information”