Former CIA Director John Brennan may soon find himself in a legal battle.
House Judiciary Chairman Jim Jordan (R-OH) referred Brennan, who oversaw the intel agency during the Obama administration, to the Department of Justice for investigation into whether criminal charges are appropriate in relation to alleged false statements to Congress.
The Allegations
As reported on Wednesday’s AM Update, Chairman Jordan is accusing Brennan of lying when he denied that the CIA relied on the Steele Dossier, a Clinton-funded piece of opposition research from the 2016 election, while crafting the 2017 Intelligence Community Assessment (ICA) in the waning days of the Obama White House.
Produced at President Barack Obama’s request, the ICA stated that Russia “developed a clear preference for Donald Trump” and “aspired to help him win the 2016 election.” Neither claim was actually supported by the available intel at the time, but the ICA became the basis for years of frenzied reporting and eventually lead to the Mueller probe and congressional investigations.
Jordan’s letter to Attorney General Pam Bondi cited multiple allegedly false statements by Brennan stemming from a May 2023 transcribed interview before the Judiciary Committee about the Hunter Biden laptop probe.
Then-Congressman Matt Gaetz pressed Brennan on his Russian disinformation expertise. “You were involved with analyzing the Steele Dossier,” Gates said. To which Brennan responded, “No, I was not involved in analyzing the dossier at all.”
“I said the first time I actually saw it, it was after the election. And the CIA was not involved at all with the dossier,” he continued. “It was in the FBI’s purview, their area, not ours at all.”
Newly declassified documents released over the summer revealed that senior CIA intelligence officials actually objected to referencing the Steele Dossier in the ICA due to its serious credibility problems, but then-Director Brennan overruled them, allegedly saying, “Yes, but doesn’t it ring true?”
Jordan also cited a later exchange in which Brennan testified that “the CIA was very much opposed to having any reference or inclusion of the Steele Dossier in the intelligence community assessment.” As Megyn noted, that is only true “if you don’t count the opinions of the CIA’s director, Mr. Brennan, a rather material exclusion.”
To that point, Jordan wrote in the referral letter that, “according to documents declassified by the Trump administration, the decision to incorporate information from the Steele Dossier in the ICA ‘was jointly made by the directors of CIA and FBI’… Brennan made the ultimate decision, along with then-FBI Director James Comey, to include information from the dossier in the ICA… [and] Brennan overruled senior CIA officers who objected to the inclusion of the dossier material.”
Legal Woes
The former CIA director is reportedly already under FBI investigation following a criminal referral from current CIA Director John Ratcliffe that is also related to the 2016 Trump-Russia collusion narrative. Brennan has repeatedly denied any wrongdoing.
You can get all the day’s headlines by tuning into the AM Update with Megyn Kelly on YouTube, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you like to listen. And don’t forget that you can catch AM Update live on SiriusXM’s Triumph (channel 111) weekdays at 8:45am ET.