James A. Baker

James Andrew Baker is a former American government official at the Department of Justice who served as general counsel for the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) and later served as deputy general counsel at Twitter, Inc. before being fired by Elon Musk in December 2022. A graduate of the University of Notre Dame and the University of Michigan Law School, he joined the Department of Justice in 1990. In December 2017, he was replaced as general counsel and reassigned to a different position within the FBI. It was revealed in April 2018, that he was a recipient of at least one Comey memo. In May 2018, Baker resigned from the FBI and joined the Brookings Institution as a fellow, writing for the justice-focused blog, Lawfare. In January 2019, Baker left Brookings to become director of national security and cybersecurity at the R Street Institute think-tank. Baker also teaches at Harvard Law School.