or was there silence after that? Meaning, did you engage subsequent to that of his point? Because, obviously, when the President of the United States speaks, and though you're in an independent agency, he might believe that work should begin on responding to his request.
Mr. Comey. I don't know what he believed. I never spoke to him about it again.
Ms. Jackson Lee. Did you feel a certain pressure?
Mr. Comey. I felt that he was asking me, directing me to drop a criminal investigation, which I thought was improper, so I went back, wrote a memo about it, briefed the leadership of the FBI so we could figure out what to do about it.
[Comey Exhibit No. 2
Was marked for identification.]
Ms. Jackson Lee. This is my last question, and it requires an exhibit. Pages 68, 69 of the transcript from former FBI General Counsel James Baker.
The question was: "You had said that the President's firing of Director Comey, you considered to be a threat to national security. And my question was, in what way was it a threat to national security?"
The answer was: "So the investigation at a high level was about Russia, period, full stop. And it was trying to assess, in this particular instance, what the Russians were doing or had done with respect to the 2016 Presidential election. We are
