Sitting down at the Brookings Institute with Lawfare's Benjamin Wittes, Baker made clear that he wanted to speak "as openly as I possibly can" about the origin of the FBI's investigation into Donald Trump - "to reassure the American people that it was done for lawful, legitimate reasons, and was apolitical," reports the Washington Examiner's Jerry Dunleavy. 

For those keeping track, we've gone from "there was no spying," to "the FBI used an informant on the Trump campaign, just don't call him a spy," to "ok there were multiple informants - still not spying."

And so while Obama-era officials have scrambled to perform damage control ahead of negative potential outcomes, Attorney General William Barr, James Clapper, and the CIA's former chief of counterintelligence (among others) have concluded that the Obama admin absolutely spied on Donald Trump and his campaign.