Will John Brennan Go to Jail?

AP Photo/Pablo Martinez Monsivais

Of all the cases being brought against Democrats under Pam Bondi, perhaps the easiest one to prove the guilt of the accused is against John Brennan. 

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You may think that Letitia James is pretty obviously guilty, but a good lawyer might get her off, especially with a sympathetic jury. Compared to Brennan, she is pure as the driven snow, even if under that thin dusting, the snow turns yellow pretty quickly. 

Brennan, though, is indisputably guilty, and no amount of good lawyering can hide the obvious fact that he lies all the time, and did so in front of Congress multiple times under oath. As far as I know, it is only on one occasion—a deposition taken in 2023—for which he can be charged due to statutes of limitations, but there are likely to be multiple counts of perjury stemming from that testimony. 

The House Judiciary Committee referred Brennan to the Justice Department in a criminal complaint, which stems from testimony he made originally in 2017, but which he restated in a 2023 investigation regarding the use of the Steele Dossier in the intelligence community assessment of Russian interference in the 2016 election. 

Byron York gives a précis of the evidence in a Washington Examiner column, and the evidence is damning. 

Often, witnesses will leave themselves as much wiggle room as possible, trying to create a narrative that benefits them, but leaving ambiguity they can use to escape if they get caught. 

Not Brennan. He made definitive statements that are irrefutably contradicted by unambiguous facts. He didn't merely "deceive" through omission; he lied. 

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The dossier, as everyone knows today, was a political oppo research job. It was put together by a former British spy who was hired and paid by operatives working on behalf of the Hillary Clinton campaign. As an investigative document, it was 100% BS.

That, of course, did not stop the FBI from embracing it. The bureau accepted the dossier as a legitimate source. The FBI included material from the dossier in a secret court application to wiretap a former low-level Trump campaign aide named Carter Page. And it even briefly hired the dossier’s fabricator, Christopher Steele. 

Here was where things did not add up for Hill investigators. Given what the FBI was doing, one might have expected that the CIA would also have played some role in the whole dossier saga. But John Brennan, then the head of the CIA, swore under oath that the CIA had nothing to do with the dossier. 

A lot of the Republicans’ questions had to do with what was called the Intelligence Community Assessment, the document produced by the CIA, FBI, NSA, and other agencies describing their investigation into Russian efforts to influence the 2016 election. The assessment had famously — and controversially — concluded that Vladimir Putin “developed a clear preference” for candidate Donald Trump and “aspired” to help Trump win the election. 

GOP investigators wanted to know: Was that conclusion based on the dossier? Republicans knew the FBI wanted to include the dossier’s allegations in the Intelligence Community Assessment. But what about the CIA? Did Brennan’s agency support including the dossier in the assessment? In testimony on May 23, 2017, Brennan said absolutely not, that the dossier played no role in the CIA’s work. Brennan told lawmakers the dossier “was not in any way used as a basis for the Intelligence Community Assessment.”

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Brennan told lawmakers that the Steele Dossier had no impact on the CIA analysis. In fact, while his underlings knew that the Dossier was a bunch of crap, Brennan insisted that they include it and rely upon the accusations to make their assessment. Not only did the CIA rely on it, but Brennan specifically ordered that it did against the objections of his underlings. 

...career CIA analysts did not want to include the dossier. The CIA’s deputy director for analysis sent Brennan an email saying that including the dossier’s information in any form would threaten “the credibility of the entire document.” That was when Brennan made the decision to overrule his experts. From the CIA’s Directorate of Analysis:


Despite these objections, Brennan showed a preference for narrative consistency over analytical soundness. When confronted with specific flaws in the dossier by the two mission center leaders — one with extensive operational experience and the other with a strong analytic background — he appeared more swayed by the dossier’s general conformity with existing theories than by legitimate tradecraft concerns. Brennan ultimately formalized his position in writing, stating that “my bottomline is that I believe that the information warrants inclusion in the report.”

Director Ratcliffe has also declassified a 2020 House Intelligence Committee report, which the CIA had kept under wraps, that outlined Brennan’s involvement in the dossier. The report, based on the committee’s interviews with CIA staff, said that “two senior CIA officers,” both with extensive Russia experience, “argued with [Brennan] that the dossier should not be included at all in the Intelligence Community Assessment, because it failed to meet basic tradecraft standards, according to a senior officer present at the meeting. The same officer said that [Brennan] refused to remove it, and when confronted with the dossier’s many flaws responded, ‘Yes, but doesn’t it ring true?’”

Taken together, these passages show that significant portions of Brennan’s congressional testimony about the dossier and the Intelligence Community Assessment were untrue. When he said the dossier “was not in any way used as a basis for the Intelligence Community Assessment” — that was untrue. When he said “I was not involved in analyzing the dossier at all” — that was untrue. When he said “the CIA was not involved at all with the dossier” — that was untrue. When he said “The CIA was very much opposed to having any reference or inclusion of the Steele dossier in the Intelligence Community Assessment” — that was untrue.

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Brennan didn't mislead; he said things that were untrue, and there is no credible way he can argue that he misremembered. It was he, after all, who insisted on the inclusion of the Dossier, and he had to argue to make it happen. 

It's even in writing. 

Does this mean that Brennan, who is obviously guilty, will face the music? 

Who knows? This is Washington, Brennan is CIA and has gotten away with perjury before, including lying about spying on the US Senate in grossly illegal manners. Brennan COULD escape justice. 

But he just might face consequences. This is also Trump's Washington, and even though the city and its environs HATE the man, he is hardly powerless. 

This case will be a test: is there any justice when it comes to Democrats (or bureaucrats?). Or does the law only apply to Republicans (and even then, the laws are made up as we go along)?


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