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Former CIA director John Brennan, who is being investigated over his handling of the 2016 Russia probe, played a key role in pushing Russiagate and other anti-Trump conspiracies as an MSNBC contributor.
Justice Department sources told Fox News Digital on July 8 that current CIA Director John Ratcliffe referred evidence of wrongdoing from Brennan along with former FBI Director James Comey to current FBI Director Kash Patel for potential prosecution, citing Brennan’s handling of the 2017 Russia collusion investigation as an example.
Brennan was appointed by President Obama and served as the director of the CIA from March 2013 until President Trump took office in 2017. Brennan’s final year on the job was a busy one, as he helped launch the “Crossfire Hurricane” investigation into the Trump campaign’s alleged ties to Russia during the 2016 election cycle.
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John Brennan landed a cushy gig as an MSNBC and NBC News analyst following his stint as CIA director. (William B. Plowman/NBC/NBC Newswire/NBCUniversal via Getty Images)
Brennan made notable appearances on both CNN and MSNBC throughout 2017 until he was announced as an MSNBC and NBC News paid contributor in March 2018. He also penned an August 2018 New York Times op-ed that mirrored much of his cable news rhetoric.
Brennan’s piece, “President Trump’s Claims of No Collusion Are Hogwash,” insisted a criminal conspiracy was a legitimate possibility.
“The only questions that remain are whether the collusion that took place constituted criminally liable conspiracy, whether obstruction of justice occurred to cover up any collusion or conspiracy, and how many members of ‘Trump Incorporated’ attempted to defraud the government by laundering and concealing the movement of money into their pockets,” Brennan wrote.
Brennan penned an op-ed for The New York Times in August 2018 calling President Trump’s claims of no collusion between his campaign and Russia as “hogwash.” (Fox News Digital )
The investigation was taken over by Special Counsel Robert Mueller, who ultimately concluded in March 2019 that there was insufficient evidence of a criminal conspiracy between Trump’s 2016 presidential campaign and Russia.
Brennan then appeared on MSNBC to declare, “I don’t know if I received bad information, but I suspected there was more [evidence of collusion] than there actually was.”
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According to Brennan’s own notes, cited in Special Counsel John Durham’s report on the origins of the FBI’s Russiagate investigation, he briefed Obama and other national security officials on intel that “alleged approval by Hillary Clinton on July 26, 2016 of a proposal from one of her foreign policy advisors to vilify Donald Trump by stirring up a scandal claiming interference by Russian security services.”
He then briefed Comey about his meeting with Obama the day prior but told investigators he did not think he presented the intelligence regarding what Durham dubbed the “Clinton Plan” to the FBI director.
Days later, he met with Obama, then-Vice President Joe Biden and other top officials, including then-Attorney General Loretta Lynch, briefing them all about the “Clinton Plan intelligence” among other material pertaining to Russian interference in the 2016 election.
Despite his public acknowledgments in 2019 and his private knowledge of Clinton’s scheme during the 2016 election, Brennan regularly fueled the legitimacy of Russiagate as the Mueller investigation was ongoing.
In March 2018, after Trump accused the Obama administration of starting an investigation into his campaign “with zero proof of wrongdoing” before the election, suggesting it was to help Clinton win, Brennan told him his social media post was “a great example of your paranoia, constant misrepresentation of the facts, and increased anxiety and panic (rightly so) about the Mueller investigation.”
Days later, Brennan suggested Trump’s congenial relationship with Russian President Vladimir Putin was because Russia “may have things that they could expose and reveal” about him.
Brennan called Trump’s “SpyGate” accusations a “mischaracterization and dishonesty” in May 2018.
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Fox News Digital learned that ex-CIA Director John Brennan is being investigated by the Trump DOJ over alleged wrongdoing in the Russia probe. (Alex Wong/Getty Images)
Brennan also threw around the term “treason,” which allowed mainstream journalists and pundits to echo the claim on a regular basis under the guise that it came from the intelligence community.
“That was Brennan who said it, the former CIA director; it wasn’t the media… it was the former CIA director,” then-CNN host Chris Cuomo insisted in 2018 after a guest said the media was pushing the term “treason.”
Many believed the failure to find collusion marked the end of Brennan’s time as a political pundit, but he has maintained a regular presence on MSNBC.
But it was hardly the only time Brennan’s credibility faced scrutiny.
In October 2020, Brennan was one of 51 former senior intelligence officials who signed a letter insisting Hunter Biden’s scandal-plagued laptop had “all the classic earmarks of a Russian information operation,” which was quickly used by legacy news outlets to dismiss the laptop altogether.
The laptop has since been verified as authentic, another anti-Trump talking point pushed by Brennan that failed to live up to liberal expectations.
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Brennan maintains a strong presence on MSNBC’s airwaves despite questions about his credibility. (Screenshot/MSNBC)
The Brennan investigation comes after Ratcliffe declassified a “lessons learned” review of the creation of the 2017 Intelligence Community Assessment (ICA) earlier this month. The 2017 ICA alleged Russia sought to influence the 2016 presidential election to help then-candidate Donald Trump. But the review found that the process of the ICA’s creation was rushed with “procedural anomalies,” and that officials diverted from intelligence standards.
It also determined that the decision to include the Steele dossier, a now-widely discredited anti-Trump document, “ran counter to fundamental tradecraft principles and ultimately undermined the credibility of a key judgment.”
Records declassified as part of that review further revealed that Brennan did, in fact, push for the dossier to be included in the 2017 ICA. Brennan testified to the House Judiciary Committee in May 2023, however, that he did not believe the dossier should be included in that intelligence product.
The day after the investigation was reported, Brennan appeared on MSNBC’s “Deadline: White House” with Nicolle Wallace to downplay the ordeal.
“I’m really shocked that individuals are willing to sacrifice their reputations, their credibility, their decency to continue to do Donald Trump’s bidding, on something that clearly is just politically based,” Brennan told MSNBC viewers.
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Fox News Digital’s Lindsay Kornick and Brooke Singman contributed to this report.