Each contact by a Clinton crony was unsolicited, according to Solomon's FBI sources, in what they described as a "classic case of information saturation" meant to inject toxic and unverified opposition research into the agency's counterintelligence apparatus that should have known better than to eventually bite.

Ex-FBI general counsel James Baker, one of the more senior bureau executives to be targeted, gave a memorable answer when congressional investigators asked how attorney Michael Sussmann from the Perkins Coie law firm, which represented the Clinton campaign and Democratic Party, came to personally deliver him dirt on Trump.

"You'd have to ask him why he decided to pick me," Baker said last year in testimony that has not yet been released publicly. The FBI's top lawyer turned over a calendar notation to Congress, indicating that he met Sussmann on Sept. 19, 2016, less than two months before Election Day. -The Hill