House Judiciary Chair Refers Ex-CIA Director John Brennan for Criminal Prosecution

Republicans who lead the House Judiciary Committee on Tuesday referred former CIA Director John Brennan to Attorney General Pam Bondi for criminal prosecution in connection with an investigation in 2016 into alleged Russian–Trump collusion.

The chairman of the panel, Rep. Jim Jordan (R-Ohio), wrote in a letter that Brennan allegedly “knowingly made false statements during his transcribed interview” in May 2023 with the House Judiciary Committee, and that he provided “numerous willfully and intentionally false statements of material fact” during his testimony.

As an example, the letter said that Brennan, who had served as CIA director under President Barack Obama, had denied that the intelligence agency used the “Steele dossier” in coming up with a post-election assessment following Donald Trump’s first presidential win in 2016. The reference is to a collection of documents and claims that were put together by former UK intelligence official Christopher Steele.

Used as Democratic-funded opposition research against Trump in 2016, the dossier has long been discredited as false by Republicans as well as by former special counsel John Durham. In a report released in 2023, Durham said that FBI investigators did not corroborate a “single substantive allegation” in the dossier, even though it was continually cited in warrant applications to the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court to surveil former Trump aide Carter Page.

According to Jordan’s Oct. 21 letter to Bondi, Brennan told lawmakers that he wasn’t involved in analyzing the Steele dossier and that he only saw it after the 2016 election. Jordan said that Brennan’s statement to Congress about the CIA not being involved was false.

“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,” Brennan had testified before the lawmakers, according to the letter.

Jordan, who cited declassified documents that were obtained by news outlet The Federalist, said that after “a CIA officer drafted the annex containing a summary of the dossier,” Brennan and then-FBI Director James Comey allegedly included information from the dossier in a post-2016 Intelligence Community Assessment (ICA).

Jordan also accused Brennan of overruling top-level CIA officials who didn’t want to include that information.

“As the newly declassified documents demonstrate, Brennan eagerly wanted to include information from the Steele dossier in the ICA, a fact Brennan himself documented in writing,” Jordan also wrote. “This directly contradicts Brennan’s testimony that ‘the CIA was very much opposed to having any reference or inclusion of the Steele dossier in the [ICA]’ because as the Director of the CIA, Brennan spoke for the Agency.”

Earlier this year, Brennan and former Director of National Intelligence James Clapper wrote an essay for The New York Times defending their handling of the Russia collusion investigation, saying that assertions made by Trump, CIA Director John Ratcliffe, and Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard are false.

“Despite claims by Trump administration officials of a nefarious political conspiracy, we did everything we could at the time to prevent leaks of intelligence reports,” the two former intelligence officials wrote.

They also claimed that “every serious review has substantiated the intelligence community’s fundamental conclusion that the Russians conducted an influence campaign intended to help Mr. Trump win the 2016 election.”

Trump and a number of Republicans have long said that the Russia collusion investigation was a hoax and a witch hunt. They accused intelligence officials of leaking information to the media to harm Trump’s presidency.

Last month, Comey was charged by federal prosecutors with making false statements and obstructing a congressional investigation. He has pleaded not guilty, decrying the case as politically motivated.

The former FBI director on Monday asked a federal judge to dismiss criminal charges against him and argued that the prosecutor who brought the charges, U.S. Attorney Lindsey Halligan, was not appointed lawfully and that he is being targeted because of Trump’s personal directives.

On social media and in comments to the media after he took office earlier this year, Trump called for investigations or prosecutions into Comey, New York Attorney General Letitia James, Sen. Adam Schiff (D-Calif.), and former adviser John Bolton. Comey, James, and Bolton have all been charged with various crimes in recent days.

The Epoch Times has contacted a representative for Brennan, who works as a commentator for NBC News and MSNBC, for comment.