WASHINGTON — The former US intelligence officer who confronted ex-CIA Director John Brennan about his meddling in the 2016 and 2020 presidential elections told The Post in an interview this week that the Trump administration’s investigation of Brennan has to be about “restoration” of the public’s trust — not “revenge” — if it is to succeed.
Thomas Speciale, a veteran of the Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) and the Office of the Director of National Intelligence (ODNI), said he chose to attend an Oct. 30 panel event featuring Brennan at George Mason University in northern Virginia because he wanted to ask two questions.
First, what was Brennan and other Obama administration officials’ “justification … for supporting the [Steele] dossier, that was known to be false, being used as source material” in a post-2016 intelligence report that assessed Russian President Vladimir Putin had “a clear preference” for Donald Trump?
Second, why did Brennan and 50 other former intelligence officials sign off on a letter seeking to undermine The Post’s bombshell October 2020 reporting on Hunter Biden’s laptop for purportedly having “all the classic earmarks of a Russian information operation”?
Speciale — who ran for the US Senate from Virginia as a Republican in 2020 — said the US intelligence community engaged in an offensive counterintelligence operation “against all of America” in 2016.
Then Brennan and former Director of National Intelligence (DNI) James Clapper went on, Speciale added, “ultimately to influence the election in 2020” by signing a letter that was amplified in a Politico headline — “Hunter Biden story is Russian disinfo, dozens of former intel officials say” — and used as a talking point for then-Democratic nominee Joe Biden in his second debate against Trump.
“They’ve already lost their security clearances. Their reputations are trashed,” Speciale said of the 51 so-called “Spies Who Lie,” while emphasizing the need for “accountability” by the Trump administration.
“I have talked to two people personally who were signatories,” he revealed. “I could name them if it ever became necessary, but one of them said that he signed it as a favor to a friend. The other one said he signed it because, well, there were multiple versions of the laptop.”
“I am hoping that the Department of Justice is looking at it from the standpoint that these are career intelligence officials, conducting activities to influence elections,” he also said.
“We have to have a full open-kimono investigation,” Speciale urged. “Treason has to be from a foreign power for the most part, but seditious conspiracy might be a charge that these people could be charged with because they colluded in order to damage, defame, derail Trump 1.0 and then ultimately to influence the election in 2020.”
Asked how a federal investigation of Brennan should be conducted, Speciale said: “It can’t be revenge; It has to be restoration.”
Brennan defended the signing of the letter in 2020 and fumed that Speciale was spreading “disinformation” at the panel event about the 2016 contest, but the intelligence veteran said he believes the former CIA boss was flustered because his real reason for taking both those actions is he “hated Trump.”
“That’s why I think Brennan is so — was so — angry,” Speciale explained.
Gabbard, who released a trove of declassified documents over the summer on the 2017 Intelligence Community Assessment (ICA) about Trump’s electoral defeat of Hillary Clinton, has accused Brennan, Clapper and then-FBI Director James Comey of taking part in a “treasonous conspiracy.”
Central to Speciale’s questioning of Brennan was a Dec. 22, 2016, email chain, released by Gabbard in August, in which Clapper emphasized that his ODNI, Brennan’s CIA, Director Michael Rogers’ National Security Agency, and Comey’s FBI had to all be “on the same page.”
“This is one project that has to be a team sport,” Clapper told the three others.
Rogers sent an email earlier the same day to express “concerns” about his team not being given “sufficient access to the underlying intelligence … to be absolutely confident in their assessments.”
Speciale said that he had “never ever seen an email like that ever” and it’s one of the reasons he was spurred to press Brennan last week.
“These are the head dogs for the entire intelligence community, and Mike Rogers is saying, ‘Hey guys, the intel does not support this assessment,’” he added.
“No one would ever say, ‘This needs to be a team sport. We all need to be on board.’ And he knew what I was talking about,” Speciale said of Brennan, who lashed out that his interlocutor’s remarks were “bulls–t.”
“There was no reporting that said Putin had directed it,” Speciale added of the other declassified files that Gabbard put out earlier this year, “and there was no reporting that said Russia favored Trump. In fact, there was contradictory reporting that said Russia doesn’t think Trump can win and they just want to do as much damage as possible to the country.”
That initial reporting was contained in intelligence assessments that predated the 2017 ICA, those files show.
Separately, the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence determined in a 2020 report that Brennan ignored “veteran” officers in December 2016 and ordered the publication of the “substandard” intelligence report claiming Putin “aspired” to help Trump.
The committee’s 44-page report stated that “fabricated” details from former MI6 spy Christopher Steele’s dossier, which was funded in part by the Democratic National Committee as well as Clinton’s campaign, was forced into the 2017 ICA over the objections of senior officials.
When pressed about the inclusion of the dossier, which intel analysts had said lacked “basic tradecraft standards,” Brennan is quoted in the report as replying to his team, “Yes, but doesn’t it ring true?”
In July of this year, a senior intelligence analyst blew the whistle on a pressure campaign from Obama officials that forced him to sign off on the 2017 assessment that Russia interfered in the election.
“You can’t have a true thing be silenced in order to influence a political election by the government,” said Speciale, who claimed an Obama official also “overruled” him on a report dealing with threats from Iranian terror networks as the 44th administration was seeking a nuclear deal with Tehran.
“The government can’t do that, and they jumped on the bandwagon,” he said of of the Obama officials.
“It’s sad that the state of affairs in our country is that you can even bamboozle a bunch of intelligence officers to sign on to influence an election,” Speciale said. “I know I’m furious.”
Reps for Brennan did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
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