U.S. House Judiciary Committee Chairman Jim Jordan has referred disgraced former CIA Director John Brennan to the Justice Department for prosecution.
The six-page referral sent today to Attorney General Pam Bondi from the Ohio Republican accuses Brennan of perjury before the Judiciary Committee. Brennan delivered two perjurious statements proven false by the spy agency and the House Select Committee on Intelligence. He also lied to the intelligence committee in 2017, Jordan alleged.
Brennan falsely claimed that the CIA did not rely on the notorious Steele Dossier to concoct the bogus intelligence assessment that Russia helped President Trump win the 2016 election. He also falsely claimed that neither he nor the agency wanted the dossier included.
Brennan’s lies were disclosed in July. As well, he knew, as did President Barack Obama, that the Russia Collusion Hoax was conceived by the Clinton campaign, which paid for the Steele Dossier through a campaign cutout.
Lie No. 1
“Brennan falsely denied that the CIA relied on the discredited Steele dossier in drafting the post-election Intelligence Community Assessment [ICA],” Jordan alleged.
The CIA, FBI, and National Security Agency published that assessment on January 6, 2017. It said Russia “developed a clear preference” for Trump and “aspired to help” him defeat Clinton.
“This conclusion — now known to be false — was based in part on the Steele dossier,” which the ICA referenced in its main text and a two-page annex, Jordan wrote. The dossier, he observed, was a collection of “baseless accusations” against Trump’s supposed links to Russia concocted by British spy Christopher Steele, who, again, did so on behalf of Clinton’s campaign.
During a transcribed interview on May 11, 2023, in answering questions from then-GOP Florida Representative Matt Gaetz, Brennan stated that the CIA was not involved with the dossier:
Gaetz: All right. So the fact that the DNC was providing the financing for the Steele dossier’s development doesn’t give you concern that it might be partisan?
Brennan: Again, that was happening back in 2016.… I understand how you were able to tie this to my reference to my expertise, but I don’t see any relevance to the Hunter Biden laptop issue now.
Gaetz: Well, you said that you signed this letter that we now acknowledge Joe Biden misused in a debate to fool the American public because you’re this great Russia expert, so I’m trying to understand your Russia expertise. And you were involved in analyzing this information.
Brennan: 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. You can direct that to the FBI and to others.
Gaetz: Were you aware of the FBI’s involvement with the Dossier?
Brennan: Yes, because there’s an annex in the ICA, the Intelligence Community Assessment, that the Bureau asked to be included in there. It was their purview, their area, not ours at all.
An intelligence committee report in 2017 showed that testimony to be false, Jordan continued. A “CIA officer officer who served as the lead author of the ICA told [the intelligence committee] that he drafted Annex A ‘in coordination with [the] FBI,’” Jordan explained:
Ultimately, 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[.]” A senior FBI analyst confirmed this fact, telling [the intelligence committee] that, after debating for several days whether to include information from the dossier, “upper levels [at FBI and CIA] decided to put it in.”
Thus, Brennan’s claim that the CIA “was not ‘involved at all’ with the Steele dossier cannot be reconciled with the facts,” Jordan wrote.
Lie No. 2
Worse still, under questioning from Jordan, Brennan said the CIA opposed including the dossier in the assessment.
The CIA was very much opposed to having any reference or inclusion of the Steele dossier in the Intelligence Community Assessment. And so they sent over a copy of the dossier to say that this was going to be separate from the rest of that assessment. And that’s when the CIA was given formal access to it.
That claim was also false, Jordan wrote. “Multiple sources” revealed that Brennan wanted to include the dossier. Declassified documents showed that “when two CIA mission center leaders confronted Brennan with ‘specific flaws’ in the dossier, Brennan disregarded their concerns, ‘appear[ing] more swayed by the [d]ossier’s general conformity with existing theories than by legitimate tradecraft concerns.’”
Brennan even memorialized his support for the dossier’s preposterous claims in writing. “My bottom line is that I believe that the information warrants inclusion in the report,” he wrote.
And “when senior CIA officers demanded that Brennan remove the Steele dossier from the ICA, Brennan ‘refused to remove it,’” the intelligence committee revealed. Regarding the dossier’s “many flaws,” Brennan said, “yes, but doesn’t it ring true?” then ordered the dossier included over the objections of agency pros, Jordan alleged.
Lie No. 3
During an intelligence committee hearing in May 2017, Jordan alleged, “Brennan falsely asserted that the Steele dossier ‘was not in any way used as a basis for the Intelligence Community assessment that was done.’” GOP Representative Trey Gowdy of South Carolina elicited that perjurious statement.
Gowdy: Do you know if the Bureau ever relied on the Steele dossier as … part of any court filings, applications, petitions, pleadings?
Brennan: I have no awareness.
Gowdy: Did the CIA rely on it?
Brennan: No.
Gowdy: Why not?
Brennan: Because we … didn’t. It wasn’t part of the corpus of intelligence information that we had. It was not in any way used as a basis for the Intelligence Community assessment that was done.… [I]t was not.
That statement is beyond the statute of limitations for prosecution, Jordan noted.
The other two are not.
Jordan accused Brennan of breaking 18 U.S. Code 1001.
Brennan voted for the late U.S. Communist Party leader Gus Hall for president. How he became a CIA officer, let alone CIA director, with that past is unclear.
