Ordinarily, any review of intelligence activities would be done by the Director of National Intelligence Daniel Coats. “This is a complete slap in the face to the director of national intelligence,” said James Baker, the former FBI general counsel. “So why is the attorney general doing the investigation? Probably because the president trusts the attorney general more,” said Baker, now a director at the R Street Institute, a nonpartisan think tank in Washington. “Now, because of the president’s relentless efforts to politicize law enforcement, many observers fear that the attorney general is a threat to apolitical intelligence under law.”Devlin Barrett contributed to this report.

Source: Washington Post May 24, 2019 22:52 UTC