John Brennan Is in Very Big Trouble

Newly declassified documents show the former CIA director lied to Congress about the Steele Dossier’s role in the Trump-Russia investigation.

Earlier this month, I wrote about John Brennan, the former CIA director who is a pretty shady guy (for reasons I explained then).

Since that time, things have only gotten worse for Brennan.

Newly released documents make clear that he committed perjury while testifying before Congress about the CIA’s investigation into Russian collusion during the 2016 presidential election.

That’s a serious charge, and I don’t make it lightly. But the facts are plain—and it’s not the first time Brennan has been caught red-handed lying to Congress.

For years, Brennan insisted the Steele Dossier—a discredited report paid for by the Hillary Clinton campaign—was not part of the intelligence community’s report on Donald Trump’s alleged ties to Russia.

To quote Brennan directly, on May 23, 2017, he said the Steele Dossier “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.”

But newly declassified documents from the Office of the Director of National Intelligence tell a different story.

“Brennan is shown not just discussing the [Steele] dossier,” writes George Washington University law professor Jonathan Turley in The Hill, “but insisting upon its inclusion in the new assessment…”

That phrase—new assessment—matters.

As Turley explains, an earlier intelligence review had found no evidence of collusion between Trump and Russia. So the Obama White House called for another one.

In this revised assessment, Brennan handpicked analysts and insisted on including the Steele Dossier—even though the CIA’s top Russia experts concluded it “did not meet even the most basic tradecraft standards.”

The dossier wasn’t buried in a footnote. It appeared in the ICA’s main body and was detailed further in a two-page annex, according to intelligence documents.

Still, Brennan told Congress—and the American public—it was not used in the ICA. By then, of course, the dossier had been exposed as a political hit job.

When CIA officials challenged Brennan on the dossier’s flaws, he didn’t refute them. Instead, he offered a stunning reply: “Yes, but doesn’t it ring true?”

All of this spells trouble for Brennan. As the New York Times delicately put it, the new documents “complicate [his] narrative” that the Steele Dossier wasn’t used in the assessment.

Let’s be blunt: Brennan lied to Congress. Again.

But this time he wasn’t lying about spying on Senate staffers investigating CIA torture programs (which Brennan oversaw). This was about a US intelligence chief misleading Congress on an effort to undermine a democratically elected president.

How this ends for Brennan, who in 2018 accused President Trump of treason, is unclear. But if he’s wise, he’ll lawyer up, like his intelligence pal James Clapper has done.

Because Brennan looks guilty of serious federal crimes.