John Brennan, former director of the CIA and chief counterterrorism adviser to former President Barack Obama, appears to be having a rough year — and it’s likely to get a lot worse.
How it started
On his first day back in office, President Donald Trump issued an executive order blasting Brennan and the 50 other former intelligence officials who signed the infamous Oct. 19, 2020, letter, which served to discredit the New York Post’s factually accurate Oct. 14 report about the discovery and damning contents of Hunter Biden’s laptop.
“The signatories willfully weaponized the gravitas of the Intelligence Community to manipulate the political process and undermine our democratic institutions,” Trump noted in the order.
‘All the world can now see the truth.’
To remedy this perceived injustice, Trump decided to revoke signatories’ security clearances, which prompted Brennan to whine on MSNBC, claiming this was just the president’s effort to “try to get back at those individuals who have criticized him openly and publicly in the past.”
There were, however, more skeletons in Brennan’s closet the Trump administration wanted to take for a walk.
CIA Director John Ratcliffe released a damning review last week concerning how the agency under Brennan reached the conclusion that Russia tried to sway the 2016 election in favor of then-candidate Donald Trump.
Ratcliffe’s review indicates that the intelligence community’s December 2016 assessment, which was conducted at the urging of Obama and became a pillar of the Russian collusion hoax, was a rushed botch job impacted by “multiple procedural anomalies.”
Despite high-level warnings that the Steele dossier — a political opposition research report paid for in part by the Clinton campaign — “did not meet even the most basic tradecraft standards” and posed credibility risks, Brennan reportedly included it in the assessment anyway, showing “a preference for narrative consistency over analytical soundness,” says Ratcliffe’s review.
The review also indicates that the direct engagement in the assessment’s development by Brennan was “highly unusual in both scope and intensity” and “likely influenced participants, altered normal review processes, and ultimately compromised analytic rigor.”
Ratcliffe noted on X, “All the world can now see the truth: Brennan, Clapper and Comey manipulated intelligence and silenced career professionals — all to get Trump.”
‘I think they’re crooked as hell.’
A week after the release of the report, Department of Justice sources revealed to Fox News Digital that Brennan and former FBI Director James Comey are under criminal investigation for potential wrongdoing related to the Russian collusion hoax, including allegedly making false statements to Congress.
While little detail has been provided about the investigation — the New York Times noted that CIA and FBI officials have declined to comment, and the DOJ has indicated it won’t comment on “ongoing investigations” — DOJ sources reportedly characterized the FBI’s view of Comey and Brennan’s interactions as a “conspiracy.”
The Washington Post confirmed, however, that Ratcliffe referred Brennan to the FBI last week to be criminally investigated for allegedly lying to Congress.
The facts outlined in Ratcliffe’s review appear to disagree with Brennan’s 2023 assertion to Congress, under oath, that he did not believe the Steele dossier should be included in the intelligence assessment.
How it’s going
Seeing the writing on the wall, Brennan did what he does best: play the victim on cable news.
After Ratcliffe released his review, Brennan went on MSNBC’s “Deadline: White House” last week to invoke Nazi Germany and suggest that the Department of Justice’s investigation into him and Comey was straight out of the “authoritarian playbook.”
On Wednesday, Brennan picked up where he left off, telling MSNBC’s Nicolle Wallace, “This is, unfortunately, a very sad and tragic example of the continued politicization of the intelligence community, of the national security process.”
When asked on Wednesday whether he wanted to see Brennan and former FBI Director James Comey thrown in jail, President Donald Trump said, “I think they’re very dishonest people. I think they’re crooked as hell, and maybe they have to pay a price for that. I believe they are truly bad people and dishonest people. So whatever happens, happens.”
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The post Ex-CIA Director John Brennan’s bad year could get a lot worse: ‘Maybe they have to pay a price for that’ appeared first on TheBlaze.