The federal prosecutor investigating the Trump-Russia hoax has set his sights on the alleged ringleader of the hoax, former C.I.A. director John Brennan, the New York Times reported on Thursday.
According a Times source, U.S. Attorney John H. Durham has “requested Brennan’s emails, call logs and other documents from the C.I.A” pertaining to Brennan’s role in the Russia collusion investigation.
He is also reportedly probing what Brennan told other officials, including fired FBI director James Comey, about his views of the discredited Steele dossier.
In addition to that, Durham is “also examining whether Brennan privately contradicted his public comments, including May 2017 testimony to Congress, about both the dossier and about any debate among the intelligence agencies over their conclusions on Russia’s interference,” according to the Times.
In sworn testimony before the House Intelligence Committee in May of 2017, Brennan claimed that the Steele dossier was “not in any way used as the basis for the intelligence community’s assessment” that Russia interfered in the election to help elect Donald Trump. He has repeated this claim numerous times in media appearances, including last February on “Meet the Press.”
Two top former Obama administration officials have since then contradicted Brennan’s testimony about the unverified dossier.
Retired National Security Agency Director Michael Rogers and former Director of National Intelligence James Clapper have both made statements that suggest Brennan may have perjured himself when he testified about anti-Trump Steele dossier.
Rogers stated in a classified letter to Congress that the DNC and Clinton campaign-funded dossier did factor into the assessment, and Clapper conceded in a recent CNN interview that the ICA was based on “some of the substantive content of the dossier.”
Brennan may have also perjured himself in written testimony to the House Intel Committee when he claimed that he had briefed each member of the so-called Gang of Eight about “Russian attempts to interfere in the election” between August 11, 2016 and September 6, 2016.
At the time, the Gang of Eight—congressional leaders who are briefed on classified intelligence matters by the executive branch—was comprised of Senators Harry Reid (D-Nev.), Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.), Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.), Richard Burr (R-N.C.), and Representatives Paul Ryan (R-Wis.), Devin Nunes (R-Calif.), and Adam Schiff (D-Calif.).
“Again, in consultation with the White House, I personally briefed the full details of our understanding of Russian attempts to interfere in the election to congressional leadership,” Brennan wrote. “I provided the same briefing to each Gang of Eight member. Given the highly sensitive nature of what was in what was an active counterintelligence case, involving an ongoing Russian effort, to interfere in our presidential election, the full details of what we knew at the time were shared only with those members of congress; each of whom was accompanied by one senior staff member.”
After his meeting with Brennan, Reid fired off a letter to FBI Director James Comey demanding an investigation into “the questions raised” in the Clinton/DNC/Steele dossier.
But Nunes told Fox Business host Maria Bartiromo on “Sunday Morning Futures” last July that he and former Speaker Paul Ryan were never told about the Steele Dossier.
“The CIA has mostly come clean about its activities during the 2016 election,” Nunes said. “The only one who has questions to answer is John Brennan,” he added. “We now know that John Brennan briefed Harry Reid on the dossier in August of 2016,” Nunes said. “At the same time, he never briefed me or Paul Ryan, who was the Speaker of the House at the time.”
Brennan kept a stiff upper lip in a recent appearance on MSNBC.
“I feel good about what it is we did as an intelligence community, and I feel very confident and comfortable with what I did, so I have no qualms whatsoever about talking with investigators who are going to be looking at this in a fair and appropriate manner,” he said.